Real Kids

Finally got aroiund to watching A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). I'd been putting it off because it's quite long, and also I expected it to be emotionally devastating. Right again.

It starts with an info-dump. Global warming has lead to eco-catastrophe. Shorelines are flooded, population decimated. Of course, rich countries are fine. Just a little short of cheap labor. Robots help with that. Then we have robotics scientist William Hurt proposing the design of robots that love us - not sex-bots, but a real emotional connection. But, he asks, will we love them?

Sam Robards and Frances O'Conner have a young son in a coma. One day, Robards comes home with a proposition: The robotics company he works for offered him a robot kid, fully capable of loving. It's Haley Joel Osment. O'Connor is appalled at first but comes around to the idea, and uses to code for him to imprint on her. Now he will love her forever.

But something wonderful happens - their son gets better. And so he comes home, and he's not too happy about the robot. He doesn't exactly bully him - he has his mother read him Pinocchio, sort of to taunt him. He encourages him to do some things that go wrong. Soon the parents are worried about their sons safety. Osment has got to go. And since he has been imprinted on O'Connor, he must be destroyed. 

And so O'Connor drives Osment to the robot factory. She is silent, he is just happy to be with his mother. But she can't give him up to be destroyed. So she dumps him like a kitten, tearfully telling him she will never see him again, as he begs her not to go. 

So begins his journey through this new world. He is picked up by a band of robot hunters and taken to a Flesh Fair, where anti-robot humans gleefully destroy robots in a monster truck rally/tent revival show. There he meets Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a sexbot who sort of takes him under his wing. 

He survives the fair, and goes on a search for the Blue Fairy, who he has learned from Pinocchio casn turn him into a real boy. Things get pretty crazy.

SPOILERS! The search takes them to flooded New York City, where he meets Hurt. Hurt shows him how successful his design has been - rooms full of Osment robots. Osment discovers that he is not at all special, and certainly not a real boy. But he later finds the Blue Fairy - a statue in the submerged Coney Island. And so he prays to her - for two thousand years, as an ice age freezes him solid. 

He is revived by a race of Brancusi-like humanoids (I thought aliens, but Wikipedia says robots). Humanity has become extinct, and he is the last being who knew them personally. They clone his mother for him, to give him one perfect day. They spend it alone together, then they go to sleep together - forever.

As expected, the mother/"son" stuff is heartbreaking. It's interesting in light of what I've heard about Spielberg's mother from The Fabelmans. The design work is great, more understated than, say Minority Report, but of similar quality. But honestly, I would have appreciated more adventures, more exploration of the flooded world, and less mother/son stuff. Look, it's a long movie, let's keep things moving.