A. I.

I was really looking forward to a new Spielberg movie.  I'm not sure this one really fits that description.  This movie was originally Stanley Kubrick's project, and I'm wondering if Spielberg tried to adjust his style to mimic Kubrick.

Jacob's only comment was that it was slow.  Parts of it were.  Even the action sections seemed pretty static.

At first, I thought this was a fairly straightforward morality theme.  What is a human's obligation to an AI being?  But they abandoned that pretty quickly.   Well, not quickly, but well before halfway through a long movie.

I guess one thing that I had trouble with was the AI kid didn't seem to learn very well.  He had a hard time differentiating between reality and fantasy.  So did the other robots.  It wasn't at all clear why this would be so.  I don't think they were trying to show the limitations of programming an AI.  Technical limitations wasn't the point of the movie.  So I guess it was just a plot device to move the boy along on his journey.

They also tried to show the robots imitating emotion, but I feel like I missed something, again.  I saw loyalty, but not much else.  It probably wasn't supposed to be verisimilitude, so that leaves some sort of symbolism.  And I usually miss most symbolism less subtle than a slap in the face.

And were the things at the end supposed to be aliens or our own AI many years in the future?  I guess I zoned out for that bit of exposition.

This felt like a good movie, but I think I missed most of the symbolism.  It was thought-provoking, though.  On my brother's Total Movie Value Scale, Rental with Dinner.

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