Artificial Intelligence: AI ***** (2001, Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law) – Classic Movie Review 232

The Sixth Sense’s Haley Joel Osment (then 13) proves what a little superstar he is as a robot boy who just longs to be human in Steven Spielberg’s dazzling sci-fi film, made in 2001.

In the near future, a dad, Henry Swinton (Sam Robards), brings a highly advanced robokid home to please his wife Monica (Frances O’Connor), whose real son Martin (Jake Thomas) is sick in hospital. Mom soon grows to love the unblinking robot boy David. But then her own son returns and starts trouble, forcing her to dump a heartbroken Osment and his talking teddy bear in a forest.

There the boy meets a robotic gigolo – a thrilling Jude Law as Gigolo Joe. In a kind of parallel universe to The Wizard of Oz, they head off together for Rouge City. The Peter Pan story and Tinkerbell are clearly in here somewhere too.

But now the robot boy longs to become real so that he can regain his mother’s love.

In a painstaking, meticulous 67-day shoot, Steven Spielberg conjures up a great-looking, thought-provoking movie that tackles a big issue – what it is to be human. And the result overflows with joy and REAL intelligence. It’s agreeably steady-paced and sentimental, but still wonderfully mainly a feast for the eyes, brain and heart.

As usual, Spielberg gathers together the classiest of collaborators. Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography, Stan Winston’s ambitious effects, Rick Carter’s production designs and John Williams’s score help produce the expected glorious Spielberg production.

In his first writing credit since Poltergeist (1982), Spielberg wrote the screenplay based on the clever short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long by renowned, popular British sci-fi writer Brian Aldiss (Frankenstein Unbound, Brothers of the Head). AI was long planed by Stanley Kubrick, working on it for 12 years and lovingly honing while waiting for the real-life technology to catch up so that he could make it.

But he died before he could film it and collaborator Spielberg took over his work, which then consisted of a complete treatment and considerable conceptual art. Spielberg’s Amblin and Dreamworks companies produce AI in association with Stanley Kubrick Productions. Ian Watson is credited with the screen story.

William Hurt is Professor Hobby (Kubrick had produced his films in the UK as Hobby Films); Brendan Gleeson plays Lord Johnson-Johnson.

William Butler Yates’s poem The Stolen Child is accessed in the script and there are parallels with Philip K Dick’s story Second Variety.

Joseph Mazzello, from Jurassic Park, was cast back in 1993 when the movie was first planned.

Osment graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2011. He was paid only $150,000 for The Sixth Sense, but $1million for Pay It Forward (2000) and $2million for Artificial Intelligence: AI.

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(C) Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Film Review 232 derekwinnert.com

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/