A.I. - The Cincinnati Enquirer - June 29, 2001

'E.T.' meets '2001'

By Margaret McGurk
The Cincinnati Enquirer


(PG-13; some sexual content, violent images)
Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law.
Written and directed by Steven Spielberg.
146 minutes.
Playing at:
National Amusements, Danbarry Middletown, Princess Oxford, Bel-Air Drive-In, Starlite Drive-In, Great Escape 14, Showplace 8.
Few movies this year have been as eagerly anticipated as A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a science-fiction drama first conceived by the late Stanley Kubrick and completed by Steven Spielberg.

There are no more formidable names in filmdom, certainly not in the realm of fantasy and science-fiction.

Mr. Kubrick's hand is unmistakable in the film's chilly vision of a future where robots force humans to confront a host of difficult issues, inspired by Brian Aldiss' short story ''Supertoys Last All Summer Long.'' Yet under the sentimental guidance of Mr. Spielberg, who wrote a complete screenplay based on voluminous correspondence with Mr. Kubrick, the movie falters both as a story and as a cinematic experience.

That's not to say it doesn't look good. Visually, the movie is astonishing, full of fastidious modern designs and flawless special effects.

The central figure in A.I. is David (Haley Joel Osment), a robot boy created to replace the lost child of a grieving couple. His maker (William Hurt) endows him with the revolutionary ability to love and to want love in return, but only if his ''parents'' deliberately activate specific programming.

His mother does so, but comes to regret it when her first child is restored to her. When sibling rivalry makes David look like a threat, she abandons him in a forest rather than send him back to a factory to be destroyed.

For the rest of the film, he strives to be reunited with her, enduring a wild series of Blade Runner adventures as he dodges robot-hating yahoos in the company of a flashy ''love robot'' called Gigolo Joe (Jude Law).

In the closing section, Mr. Spielberg invokes Mr. Kubrick's grand, enigmatic 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as his own sweet-natured E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. Unfortunately, he also invokes the painful memory of Bicentennial Man, another movie that tried to imagine robotic evolution.

A.I. ends up stuck because it seems Mr. Spielberg can't help expressing his kindly instincts (a talking teddy bear, for instance) into Mr. Kubrick's cold vision, without resolving its central question: Can machines ever be more than tools to humans?

David loves his mommy because of his programming; he can't grow up, he can't change and he can't learn to love anyone else. That makes him poignant, but not particularly interesting except in relation to the people around him.

But A.I. doesn't invest much in the humans who create and discard the robots and who presumably have the capacity to be changed by their experiences.

Stanley Kubrick might have made a movie in which the humans don't matter. Steven Spielberg apparently cannot.

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