Bicentennial Man film review

certificate_PG

BICENTENNIAL MAN

Maybe Chris Columbus just can't stand Robin Williams's face. There has to be some good reason the Stepmom director requires his star to don elaborate make-up each time they collaborate. Previously, it was the bustling, rotund and frankly rather disturbing guise of Mrs Doubtfire; here it's still the household service industry, but from an entirely different and new-Millennium-friendly angle.

In an affluent, suburban home five years from now, Sam Neill is about to surprise his wife (Wendy Crewson) and daughters (Lindze Letherman, Hallie Kate Eisenberg) with a new arrival. It's not a puppy.Labouring under plate after plate of robot prosthetics, it's Robin Williams as Andrew' (youngest daughter Eisenberg's mispronunciation of android) - the latest, state-of-the-art mod con, fully pre-programmed to take care of all known household chorage.

But this is a Chris Columbus film remember, and these days that means buckets of emotion garnished with a large splodge of sentiment and not a few tears on the side.

So there are early family ructions - Eisenberg loves him, elder sis Letherman hates him, Crewson feels a bit superseded at times - all of which point to Andrew questioning what makes humans tick and how he can learn to tick too.

An emotionless automaton learning about feelings and struggling to become a person is a well-trod path in sci-fi's family department, and this one follows the format of many a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode (cf: Commander Data), though somehow with rather less subtlety.

In its favour, however, it's ambitious in scale and scope, settling in for the long haul with Williams' gradual transformation which takes the best part of two centuries to achieve (hence the title) and obviously leaves behind many of the original characters as a result.

Williams is clearly well-skilled and highly experienced in roles like these, and his on-screen presence is important for a character who spends much of the movie shuttered behind the near expressionless robotic mask.

With Embeth Davidtz and Oliver Platt joining the co-star list, this is agreeable enough if you take your films with several sugars - an Isaac Asimov short story rewired by Columbus into a big budget, family-friendly comedy heavy on the schmaltz.