Every movie I review, I have seen.  My usual process is to watch and begin writing as soon as possible.  Some of my selections are titles that I have seen many times and are as familiar to me as the street on which I live.  With those, I did not need to re-watch them because of that familiarity.  I will not go into any examples, but they are the kinds of films I used to put on before I began The Legionnaire when alone at night and wanting to look at something with my dinner.  I still do this, but now I have a purpose to what I see.  They also fit a type, that being something with a message.  I find that the older I get, the more a movie can tug on my heartstrings, the more times I will view it.  I thought A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) fit that description, and I know I have seen it more than once.  Yet, when sitting down to pen my thoughts on it about a year ago, I found that I could not adequately remember the proceedings.  Then, when I went to rent it on Amazon Prime to rent it, it was not available.  Thus, a blank review sat in my files, waiting to be completed.  Today, I thought I would give that streaming service one more try, and I was rewarded with availability.  I am glad I waited to put it in front of my eyeballs again because there is much to discuss as a Catholic.

Though it is not the subject of A. I. Artificial Intelligence, the film begins in the twenty-second century with the Earth finally succumbing to global warming.  Several major cities near the coast have been wiped out, but at least we have the advanced title science going for us.  The person who, frankly, is capitalizing on the loss of life and vegetation is Professor Allen Hobby (William Hurt).  He has come up with automatons that can mimic human behavior and looks as a substitute for the restrictions placed on humanity with the current ecological situation.  Yet, he is not satisfied with his creations.  They are copies, but not close to the real thing.  The missing ingredient is love.  To introduce that link into his company’s cyborgs, he proposes the construction of a boy named David (Haley Joel Osment).  The idea is to make a child to experience the connection only found between offspring and parent . . . and to market them to families who have lost a young one or cannot conceive.  Just as an aside, but one to keep in mind throughout, the interplay between commodity and the genuine article is always in the background or foreground.  Luckily, Professor Hobby’s company has an employee whose family matches these criteria: the Swintons.  They have a son, Martin Swinton (Jake Thomas), who has been put in suspended animation following an accident.  The prognosis is not good, and their doctor tells them they should move on with their lives.  The next day, Henry Swinton (Sam Robards) brings home David to Monica Swinton (Frances O’Connor), his wife.  Monica is furious, feeling that Henry is trying to replace Martin.  Eventually, though, Monica begins to warm up to David.  It is not hard to understand why this would happen.  David is earnest, the perfect little boy.  However, his arrival comes with some caveats.  Essentially, he is the first of his kind, and the Swintons are taking on the little robot on a trial basis.  If Monica decides she wants to keep David, then there are some steps she must take to complete the boy’s programming.  Once she does so, he will be hardwired to love her, and they will be no returning the machine.  This happens, but no sooner are the code words spoken than Martin has a recovery and is brought home.  David and Martin are wary of each other, but Martin treats David like another toy.  Martin is also jealous of the automaton, and increasingly gets David to do a number of things that gets him into trouble, like cutting a lock of Monica’s hair in the middle of the night.  Henry starts to feel like David has to go, but Monica remains adamant that the robot stays.  What convinces the Swintons that David needs to go is when, at a birthday party for Martin, David grabs his would-be brother when threatened and will not let go when they fall into the pool.  Henry takes it as David trying to drown Martin, and forces Monica to get rid of David.  Instead of taking David back to the factory, she instead tearfully dumps him in the woods and drives away.  David’s only companion is Teddy (voiced by Jack Angel), an automated bear.  Without any further guidance, David decides he must become a “real boy” so that Monica will love him.  To do so, he defaults to his memory of The Adventures of Pinocchio (1881), a story Monica had read him and Martin.  What stood out about the story is the Blue Fairy (voiced by Meryl Streep) granting the title puppet his humanity.  Thus, David must find the Blue Fairy.  Quickly, though, he and Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a robotic sex worker, are captured by Lord Johnson-Johnson (Brendan Gleeson).  This oddly named person works for the Flesh Fair, a so-called “celebration of life” where, in a carnival-like setting, they destroy robots.  David clings to Joe for protection, and they are saved together when David is brought out and the crowd takes pity on the “real-looking” boy.  In return for this act, Joe takes David to Rouge City to meet Dr. Know (voiced by Robin Williams).  Think Google with a computerized, 3-D face.  After some semantical wrangling over how to ask about the Blue Fairy, David and Joe are given instructions to head for Manhattan.  To do so, they end up hijacking a police hover-copter (or whatever, because it can also be a submarine?).  Their clues bring them to Professor Hobby’s office, but the meeting does not go as David hopes, but more on this later.  In his disbelief, David essentially throws himself off a building and into the sea (remember, risen sea levels) where he spots an image of the Blue Fairy.  He is briefly saved by Joe, who, before being apprehended, programs the vehicle to return to the ocean floor to where David saw his goal.  Once there, literally, he spends the next two thousand years imploring a statue to make him into a human.  At the end of a pair of millennia, his powerless body is chiseled out of the ice by advanced robots.  They inform David that he can have one last day with Monica, but that she will die as soon as she lays down to sleep.  David takes the offer, and our story ends with the two of them drifting off and everything fading to black.

As I said, there is a lot going on in A. I. Artificial Intelligence, particularly for a Catholic reviewer.  It is also kind of creepy, and one could make the argument that it is a horror movie.  To support this take, I point to the scene I referenced in the last paragraph, the disappointing meeting with Professor Hobby.  “Disappointing” is putting it mildly.  To this point, David believes he is unique, and he is not wrong.  Yet, when he enters Professor Hobby’s office, he finds another David just like him . . . which he promptly murders with a lamp, shouting about how he is special.  After Professor Hobby calms down the automaton, he tells David that the staff is eager to meet him.  Instead, David wanders onto the factory floor where he learns that he is one of many.  While this makes for some creepy cinema, I would posit that it is Professor Hobby that is the real villain of the story.  In short, he is trying to play God.  Strangely enough, the film acknowledges the folly of such an endeavor.  When they first arrive in Rouge City, David gets excited when he sees a sculpture of a woman bathed in blue light, thinking it is the magical creature he seeks.  It turns out to be the Virgin Mary, her statue placed above the entrance to the church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.  I will not get into comparisons between David and Jesus, though the advent of each is food for thought.  What I will say more definitively is that they are each motivated by love, though David’s is obviously more personal.  Yet, the Bible does tell us to approach God like a child. At any rate, outside of the church, Joe comments about how us humans are always searching for the One who made us.  In reality, we do not have to look far or long because, after all, it is God.  Unfortunately, for a disturbingly increasing number of us, that fact is becoming more abstract.  The result of this is people like Professor Hobby who feel they must create the kind of love God instilled in us from birth because they think it is somehow missing.  The fact is that God is always close to us, and we do not need anything artificial to experience Him or what He offers.  Further, we can never recreate for ourselves that which only He can provide.  These lessons are on the periphery of the movie, but never explicitly stated.  Luckily, you have The Legionnaire to provide this context.

I do appreciate, though, where A. I. Artificial Intelligence lands.  It may not speak directly to God, but as I alluded to in the last paragraph, the love between parent and child is a way of experiencing God.  The film has a darker tone than you might expect, and I would have liked a happier ending.  In the end, though, I would say this one is worth watching, if you can get past some of the seedier elements.