A.I. Artificial Intelligence film review

A.I. Artificial Intelligence is set in some undetermined future, after cataclysmic floods had devastated the world, when families are restricted to one offspring. When Monica and Henry Swinton (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards) are told their young boy Martin (Jake Thomas) is unlikely to recover from the condition that has caused him to be cryogenically frozen for five years in the hope of finding a cure, they are devastated. To Professor Hobby (William Hurt) of the pioneering firm Cybertronics, the Swintons appear the perfect couple with whom to place one of their latest and most sophisticated mechas. Humanoid robots, mechas are type specific, so you can have a hairdressing mecha, a butler mecha or even a gigolo mecha. Hobby's latest project is to build a robot child that can be programmed to love its adopted Orga parents. David (Haley Joel Osment) is the first such loving mecha to be placed. The problem concerning Hobby is not so much whether David will love his parents, but will they be able to love him.

Things are made more intriguing when the Swinton's real son makes a miraculous recovery and is returned to them causing David to now have to compete for their love. It's this quest that sets David off on an incredible odyssey as he endeavours to become a real boy as he feels only by doing so will his parents truly love him. This journey, which he undertakes with the supertoy Teddy, a walking, talking, compassionate and wise cuddly bear, brings him into contact with a variety of colourful characters, none more vivid than the late generation lover mecha Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) whose proud boast to one client is "once you've had a lover robot, You'll never want a real man again".

Together David and Joe's travels take them to the debauched Rouge City, a neon-lit, sin empire constructed like an exaggerated Las Vegas and entered via the gaping mouths of giant harlots. They also find themselves exhibits at the Flesh Fare where the reviled mechas are systematically destroyed for the pure edification of the baying Orga crowd. These dark worlds are imaginatively created and the effects are at times unnervingly convincing.

And while visually there is much to keep you stimulated throughout the film's two and half hours, it's everything else that tests your boredom threshold. The main problem is one inherent in the film's premise, which is it possible to love a robot? Well, if it's the sterile and cold David we're talking about, then the answer is no. Despite Haley Joel Osment's admirable performance, his character is essentially a programmed automaton who may know how to say the word love, but has no convincing way of exhibiting it. There's little genuine emotion to be found behind the rhetoric and the scenes between David and the Swintons provide no real clue as to why they would have bothered adopting him in the first place.

Although the question this film poses is undoubtedly compelling, unfortunately the same can't be said of the film itself.