For those of you who don't want the movie to be spoiled, please stop reading this now. For the rest who have seen it and/or doesn't care, do whatever you want. Actually, even if you haven't seen the movie and are still reading this at the moment, do whatever you want too... I just finished watching AI, starring the annoying Haley Joel Osment, and I have to say I enjoyed that movie simply because it was one of the most disturbing movie I have ever seen! First of all, I had expected it to be a kids movie, so that influenced my perception, but I still didn't expect it to be like so. There are many "disturbing" movies out there, but it was the way it was done or made disturbing that I liked. It didn't have your typical gimmicks such as mass gore as seen in Kill Bill, Dusk till Dawn, or even Natural Born Killers. Instead, it took your typical kids movie about self-discovery, stuck in a gigolo or two (known as lover mechas) as well as a murder (that scene reminded me of Dark City for some reason... but then William Hurt was in that movie too... actually, now that I think about it, the end of the movie was kind of like Dark City too! Bah!!!!) Now, my whole disturbing movie argument stems from the fact that I think it's a kids movie with a rating of only PG-13. What kind of a kids' movie incorporates all of these things? What are we teaching children? At first it started off as expected - mother can't accept robot, mother accept robot, real child gets jealous, blah blah blah. But then it starts to get funky. First, the real kid asks the robot kid to cut off a lock of the mother's hair... The result? She almost gets poked blind in her eye and the dad doesn't like the robot anymore. This pure evil genius is teaching brothers and sisters of today that if you want to be the favourite, go make your sibling try to stab your parents. Then the second part occurs during a party. A kid wants to see if the robot can feel pain, so he stabs him - wtf!@!@#!@!@ I'm sure a little pin prick would've sufficed, not a whole freaking butcher knife! Boy I'd like to see parents explain that to their kids - also the concept of gigolos, etc... The next thing I found disturbing was the whole Flesh Fair. It just reminded me of Mad Max and the Running Man by the way the robots were captured and tortured (ie fired into a spinning fan, limbs pulled off, acid being poured onto them...) I know they're only robots and stuff, but damn, I just think it's desensitizing kids and prolly giving them wrong ideas! Or at the very least, they're going to have nightmares and see faces melting everywhere... (Wizard of Oz?)
The non-violent aspect that I found somewhat disturbing was the fact that the whole movie was about a boy seeking an impossible goal (well, near impossible anyways, and he still didn't get to become a "real boy".) To me, this just made me wonder whether we are like him and are all striving for the impossible. But I'm not gonna get into this as I'm sure you can find much more philosophical discussions comparing the movie to our society on the net. But yeah, the boy just reminded me of me, striving for some goal that I can't even tell if it's achievable or not. His obsession to find the Blue Fairy and become real was also alarming because he essentially died because of it. Again, commentary on our life, but I'll just add that are we supposed to strive blindly towards our goal? In the movie, he didn't really have a reason to turn back as nobody really disputed the existence of the Blue Fairy, but what about in life? We have signs that point in both directions! But yeah, he followed that path to his "death". Now I said "death" because he was later revived by aliens and we learn that he's the only "living" proof of human technology/accomplishments as the rest of them had died. Anyways, he wakes up and sees a statue of the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio (he's in a theme park) in front of him and when he hugs her, thinking she brought him back to life, she shatters - great, nice way to encourage ppl! But even if he has been brought back, he still longs for his mother's love, so when he was given the choice of bringing his mother back for one day (aliens can bring ppl back for one day, but then they'll die again at the end of the day), what did he do? He chose to bring her back!@#@$@! Now I know the whole ending was supposed to make us feel all happy and mushy and crap like that, but seriously, I totally disagree with it. It's teaching selfishness - that the need of someone to feel loved (as if the mother didn't show enough of her love for him when she was alive) supercedes the respect of others and in fact, causes them undue suffering since they'll die again at night. Oh yeah, it's prolly a comment on society here, but I'll ignore that. Anyways, yeah, these are the reasons why I found it disturbing and it made the movie alot more interesting than other Hollywood blockbusters (ie Spiderman, Matrix)... Besides, none of them had lover mechas!!!! Mmmmmmm...
