Movie Poster

The greatest single human gift - the ability to chase down our dreams.

Past Steven Spielberg film reviews:

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
• Raiders of the Lost Ark

# Review

I work intimately with AI, so I watched this film on my plane ride back from Europe. I’m glad I watched it earlier on in the flight, because if I watched it later, I may have dismissed the memory as a fever dream. The story follows David (Haley Joel Osment), a robotic boy who gets adopted by a couple (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards) whose own son (Jake Thomas) is in a coma. When the human son wakes up from his coma and returns to his family, conflicts arise.

The story is based on a short story by Brian Aldiss and to be honest, I thought the story was going one direction and instead, it took a whole new wild direction. The plot is pretty solid, but a tad unnecessarily convoluted near the end. The cast were pretty solid, Osment’s David is very compelling for a child role while Jude Law as Joe, a robotic gigolo is just weird enough to be entertaining. I also liked O'Connor’s Monica, who is forced to be torn between her AI son and her biological son. I really liked the cyberpunk world of the future shown in this film and the John Williams musical score is amazing (as always). Being an AI researcher, it’s always interesting to see portrayals of relationships between humans and AI.

# Conclusion

A film started by one master and finished by another.

# Overall rating: 7.6

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