Brushing my teeth over and over again… (Movie review, AI)
I like to watch movies while doing cardio exercise. It magically transforms the mind-numbing boredom of maintaining a target heart rate for 40 minutes into the slightly less mind-numbing boredom of watching movies.
Anyway, I happened to be in Wal-Mart the other day and saw that they had the Stanley Kubrick/Stephen Speilberg movie AI for five bucks, so I picked it up. My reasoning was as follows: “Maybe I was too harsh about that tacked-on ending. Maybe it has some deeper aspect that I missed while trying to hold my lunch down the first time I saw it.”
Nope, I got it right the first time. The part where the weird alien is gently narrating the storybook ending about the little robot boy going to “the place where dreams are born” is every bit as insufferable and cavity-causing as I remember from the theater.
Worse, Speilberg tried to blame that ending on Kubrick and take credit for the cool dark stuff in the middle. So not buying it… did you forget that we’ve seen Kubrick’s other movies, Stephen? Did the guy who produced Clockwork Orange spew out that serving of high-fructose corn syrup at the end of AI, and you only included it out of a misplaced sense of responsibility? Remember, we’ve seen your movies, too.
My advice if you have not seen the movie is; shut off the player at the moment the ferris wheel lands on top of David’s copter. Cool movie, up to that point.
Ugh… Tomorrow I’m putting Sweeney Todd into the player before getting on the treadmill.
Sweeney Todd should be better, but I have seen neither movie so I’m talking completely out of my ass. Just from the little pieces I have seen and what I know about Sweeney Todd though, I think I would take my chances with it.
I saw Sweeney Todd, it was okay I guess.
Back when I saw AI, I just had the feeling that it could have been so much better . . .