OReviewLius's Full Review: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Every once in a while, as if to reassure its audiences that there is a real world out there with real problems to be solved, Hollywood ventures into films like Erin Brockovich, or gives us another dose of interesting but politically innocuous history in some of its finely crafted "period" pieces. However, judging from the ever more prolific previews and feature films that grace our multiplex theaters, even an automaton wouldn’t have much difficulty concluding that we are a culture in dire need of intelligence, especially as applied to the movies.
Unfortunately, despite the promise of its title, A.I., the Spielberg-Kubrick digital extravaganza, is not a film that speaks to that need. Whatever intelligence does exist in this latest foray into bleakness becomes ensconced in a contrived fairy tale so inebriated with its special effects and voodoo cybergenetics, that I found myself relieved just to walk out of the theater and randomly shake hands with people I would barely even acknowledge, in the normal course of a day,. (Just to remind myself that life as we know it, with all its passions and pretenses, still exists).
In A.I., the organic human race destroys itself through a combination of excessive consumption (resulting in Greenhouse flooding) and an equally disproportionate preoccupation with robots. The movie reaches its peak with the "Flesh Fairs" where the battle between the remaining, organic, biblical humans and the "mechas" (the androids) is enacted in a spectacle of surreal and cathartic destruction of whatever human-simulated machines can be rounded up and disintegrated…… to the roaring delight of the crowd. But instead of making this tension the moral centerpiece of the film, the robots simply and unexplainedly take over thus making superfluous any ethical deliberation on the part of the audience. Admittedly they are nice robots, probably a good bit nicer than most of the "orgs" they were made to augment or replace. But Spielberg and his cronies ignore this potential goldmine of existential tension, and predictably go for the gusto with the usual fantasmagorical pageantry of cheap-shot pseudo-adventure, resulting in an orgy of nonsense.
These kind of films, like the robots themselves in A.I., are becoming far too prevalent and if anything, testify to the megamedia’s self-indulgent, intentionally apolitical fixation with affects…both in the technical and conceptual sense. Automatons, mechanized monsters, the digitalization of death… and now artificial life…are all safe and sure ground for an industry that would do well by most of us…dealing with more ordinary dramas. For instance: trying to make a living in an area where less than 50% of the population can ever expect to buy their own home…while many of those who can, cavalierly ride around in towering vehicles as if to flaunt their resources…or shall we say ransack what’s left of ours!
There is plenty of potential conflict and drama around these ostensibly mundane yet clearly more relevant and immediate issues. But I’ll wager they are rarely (if ever) taken up by the money monguled entrepreneurs of commercial cinema because, as royalty, these folks are primarily (with an occasional exception) committed to an entertainment economy of superficial merriment, irrelevancy and synthetic stimulation. After all, with over 100 million dollars to play around with for a 2 1/2 hour romp through a cyber-obsessed, frankenstinian future, why stir up the stew over anything that might really mean anything to people today when high on the hog cultural choreographers can jack themselves off with their ostentatious techno-myopic bulldong? It’s much more likely to keep the capital recycling in the same ol’ coffers, serving the same ol’ hyper-affluent crowd, week after week, heaping up the next serving of inconsequential silliness and gratuitous mayhem. Unless, of course, we, the quickly evolving know from nothing better audience, bother to demand a more challenging bill de faire, the farce will
continue.
Like the automatons offered up for sacrifice at the Flesh Fairs, Artificial Intelligence comes apart at the seams with an equally disturbing deconstructive techno-elegance. But not to worry. I just got an e-mail announcing an even bigger summer movie event: Final Fantasy, in which "the earth is a wasteland. The remains of the human race live in an orbiting habitat, under constant threat from the seemingly indestructible alien army that has taken over our home. One woman has the answer, but few believe her. One woman can save the future. She can rescue
the Human race… if she can survive." Frankly, I’d be surprised just to survive the previews for this one!
It is the near future. The polar ice caps have melted as a result of global warming leaving many coastal cities underwater. Man has created machines t...More at HotMovieSale.com
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