JoeFrosh: I saw this movie with 7 other people. Of the three college folks, one thought it was really depressing, one thought it sucked, and one thought the storyline was presented in too disconnected a fashion. The two adults thought it was fine, though not really good, especially the explanation given for the end. The elementary school kid was shy and didn't say anything. Also, the guy in the theatre who yelled out "This movie sucked" at the end probably thought the movie sucked, and the girl who yelled "Bite me" after that probably thought it was good. I thought it was good, though perhaps a little long. Don't go expecting action or lots of vfx, though there was some. Yeah, the end was sort of dumb, but I guess I can get over that, and the various inconsistencies. The little flying box jobbie was cool :-)
EvilSouthie: I really liked this movie. I liked it enough to write this review, which I haven't done to any movie before on wiki. It almost made me cry a couple times. It occured to me a little more than halfway through (after the "moon" scene) that this really feels like a Kubrick movie done by Speilberg. Which is a little odd, but pretty cool.
CurtisVinson: The summary at the beginning of this doesn't really do the movie justice, but then, that's pretty hard. I'm not sure I would call it a good movie, but I think it was a memorable movie, something which will stick with me for some time. To my understanding, this movie was made almost literally by Spielberg channeling Kubrick (working from extensive notes and some footage which I believe was reshot) and was based on a Brian Aldiss short story. The effect was strange and often unsettling. What I'm really curious about is how closely the movie matches the short story. Most mainstream reviewers just mention the fact, probably since none of them have any familiarity with Brian Aldiss (and I will admit my knowledge with him is merely cursory). If anyone out there has read the movie and the short story, could you either post here some comparison (warning, of course, for spoilers) or e-mail me about it?
RachelGabor: I thought the movie was pretty good. Definitely worth seeing once, but not the kind of movie I want to see over and over again. It was your standard Pinocchio story, but at least it admitted to being Pinocchio and it had a slightly different twist then most Pinocchio stories do. My only really complaint was I would have cut out the last 15-20 minutes. I thought it was going to end and then it just kept going. Ending earlier I think would have been better, it didnt' really need its second ending...which wasn't as good anyway. But I would recommend seeing it....just try to not have a bunch of obnoxious 13 year-olds in the theater who giggle nonstop through the last twenty minutes.
AlexBobbs: I thought this was a really good movie, despite being a bit slow in the beginning. It won't entertain everyone (depending on how much you accept David as a real boy, some scenes can be rather disturbing) but it's darkly philosophical and had a lot of interesting Biblical allusions (casting out of the garden of Eden, Jesus protecting the prostitute, etc.). It gave me a lot to think about, and was very well done in its presentation. The final ending seems slightly tacked on, but works since it shows the final fate of mankind and hammers down one of the main themes (alluded to eariler by the Blue Fairy-Catholic Saint connection). Oh, and I want a teddy bear like that.
DanCicio: Wow. I *really* loved this movie. Even though Speilberg "officially" directed it, it's still a Kubrick movie. There were these moments when the camera just captured a pure emotion or feeling through something seemingly innocuous. I also...not "liked", but something like that...the representation of humans' feelings toward "Mecha". Oh yeah, and unlike some of the other reviews on this node, I thought the ending was very well done and a useful part of the movie. It was nice to see a movie and then not wonder, "What next?" Unless you aren't up for a long movie (~2.5 hours), go see AI. It's definitely worth it.
TimBuchheim: It was a cool movie. But it had too many endings. Everytime you think it's over, they tack another ending on. My guess is that Kubrick had several ideas for endings and never chose one before he died, so they stuck all of them in. That's just a guess, though. The moon was cool. :) JoeFrosh is right about the cube jobbie.. it's cool and was the best part of that particular ending. Teddy was great. "Are they torturing you again, Teddy?" It's interesting that Teddy was the only character not to change much from the short story. Through the whole movie I thought he had been added just to provide dialog when David would otherwise be alone. I guess I was wrong. :)
TracyvanCort: I agree with Tim about the endings. If they had just let it end when the Ferris wheel fell (this way it's not a spoiler but people who've seen the movie know what I mean) it would've been fine, and they wouldn't have had to say anything about the "space-time continuum". But what they really should've done was make the movie about Gigolo Joe. Jude Law kicked ass in the supporting role of a self-aware vibrator who (deliberately or inadvertently, I had a hard time telling how really relevant he was to the plot) had most of the lines that held meaning for me. ("After me, you'll never want a real man again." "They hate us, you know." "I am. I was.") It would've been awesome. He could've met up with David and made all the relevant points about sex vs. love, and they wouldn't have needed to do all the weird yet oddly empty ending stuff.
AriNieh: Besides Gigolo Joe, the acting was pretty flat. The plot was vague and failed to be as deep as it wanted to be. I just didn't get very caught up in it. I was also very annoyed by the "Let he who is without sin" allusion, because it was used completely wrong. It sounded like they were just throwing in lines from the Bible at random. The line is actually, "Let he who is without SIM" ("sim" was used earlier to refer to mecca)
''Q: A lot of the arguments hinge on the final act of the film. Do you look at the end of that movie as a happy or a downer ending?
Spielberg: I think it's a happy ending. I think David and Monica find eternal bliss in some other cyber heaven, or some combination of the two. I love that controversy because it makes me really feel like I made a Stanley Kubrick film. I never made a movie that people were so divided about, but on a typical Stanley Kubrick movie people are equally divided. So I think I achieved a kind of stasis with a Stanley's reputation when this film was picked apart like all of his other ones were. So I was like, "Yeah! It worked, the Stanley/Spielberg? combo worked!"
Here's the other thing, here's something I want your website people to know, because I have read the arguments. They can believe me if they want to believe me, they don't have to. I have been accused, because I wrote the screenplay, I adapted a 90 page treatment by Ian Watson and Stanley Kubrick - Stanley offered me this project in 87 to direct, and again in the early 90s I turned it down because I thought he should direct it. Then when he died his family offered it to me, saying, "You're so intimate with this project." It was the only project in the 18 years I knew Stanley - we talked once a week, sometimes three times a week - it was the only time he collaborated with me creatively on any of his ideas. Usually he was always picking my brain for stuff. Everybody always assumes that I wrote the first act, all the sweet loving stuff at home, and the distillation of that family when David is abandoned; that Stanley was responsible for the dark center section, with Gigolo Joe and the Flesh Fair and Rouge City; and then I came back in at the end to screw the picture up totally, instead of ending underwater I go 2000 years in the future and I try to resolve things between the mom and the son. In fact, word for word, I took Stanley's treatment. Stanley wrote the first act. Stanley wrote the last act. My contribution, my original writing was the middle part. I did Flesh Fair, I did Gigolo Joe (BawMahNow). This was suggested by storyboards Stanley did, but he had no story, no plot. I did all that myself. Just to set the record straight, everybody's got it mixed up.''
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