Here's what I could understand: I could understand if the robot-hating mobs of the future wanted to watch two Pinocchio wannabes beat the living crap out of each other. That would at least be entertaining.
But why they would want to launch their robots (which presumably cost a few thousand bucks a piece, even in the "not-so-distant future") out of cannons, across an arena, and through giant fans, shredding them into a thousand pieces - or pour acid over them just to watch them dissolve - that I can't understand. Where's the fun in that?
According to the movie A.I., that's what the WWF fans of the future will want to do.
Another thing I can't understand is why a master filmmaker like Steven Spielberg would flush all appreciation for plot down the toilet just to make this Stanley Kubrick film that should have either been made by Kubrick or else buried six feet under the ground with him.
A.I., like the character played by the kid that sees dead people, is a mutant child that should have been aborted in the first, second, or even third trimester. If Hal had been replaced by ET in 2001, you would have had something like A.I.
A.I. (which the opening credits are generous enough to point out stands for "Artificial Intelligence") is half incomprehensible pseudo-moralistic morality tale, and half endless monologue that attempts to insert some sort of point to the entire mess. In short, the plot consists of Pinocchio phoning home, but the Blue Fairy never picking up.
A.I. is an instant classic - classic bad movie, that is. I haven't laughed this hard during a bad movie since Honey I Shrunk the Kids.
When a certain silvery creature explains the biophysics of human regeneration, going into such details as how human hair and bone factors into the process, I couldn't control myself. This is good comedy. If you wanted to make a comedic sci-fi flick, you would definitely have your characters discuss the science of human regeneration right at the point your main character is shitting metallic bricks over having an aluminum dildo for a penis.
This movie asks the question (beware of any movie that asks a question but never gets around to answering one):
What would you do if your robot kid needed surgery after eating spinach, but remained perfectly healthy after falling in a goddamn swimming pool?
Does this kid have some kind of supersonic throat condom that keeps out water, but which falls apart and needs replacing after 100,000 miles or after any contact with green, leafy vegetables?
Oh, I'm sorry. It's just a fairy tale. I'm being too uptight. I should have given A.I. more slack.
Ok, then just one question: since when are fairy tales completely incoherent? This movie (and every idiotic producer, editor, and assistant to the assistant to the assistant director involved with this Elephant Man Meets the Land of Misfit Toys piece of crap) is stupid enough to think that the audience is stupid enough to literally forget every scene that precedes every other.
And this movie is about as touching as a French poodle with a romantic interest in your lower leg.
Here's just one example of the movie's incoherence: Pinocchio pays a visit on William Hurt, and the tears of joy start streaming down Hurt's face. But is Hurt surprised to see Pinocchio? Hell no, because he "knew" Pinocchio would hijack a helicopter with Jude Law after talking to a cartoon Einstein and stumbling upon his cozy office on Madison and 34th smack dab middle of Waterworld, New York, 10010.
William Hurt takes the dead people kid into the back office to meet "the team" who created him, and the next thing you know, Hurt is gone and the kid is out on the building's ledge ready to kill himself. Now maybe if I was so wrapped up in this movie that tears were backing up in my tear ducts and flooding out the neurons in my brain, maybe then I wouldn't stop and say "Where the fuck did Hurt go?"
And maybe then I wouldn't ask, just after a school of tuna escort Pinocchio gently to the bottom of the ocean, and just before Pinocchio travels 18 kilometers through the wreckage of the global-warming-induced demise of mankind:
"How the fuck did Pinocchio see the Blue Fairy from 18 kilometers away? Since when does this annoying brat have bionic vision?"
A.I. has everything you want in a bad movie: implausibility, absurd dialogue that explains everything but what the hell is actually going on, and the Holy Grail of bad movie qualities: it takes itself completely seriously. If the movie wasn't so boring and tedious, I might watch it again and again. But if you were looking for something better than Battlefield Earth, this is it.
"I want to be unique! I want to be unique!"
You do? Wait a second, Pinocchio. I thought you wanted to be a real boy. Now you want to be unique, too? You annoying, demanding bastard.
Signing off,
JR
