I was disappointed in this movie in a lot of ways. After an opening that raised a lot of the questions about artificial intelligence (e.g., if something is created that can “love”, do we have the responsibility to love it back?), it answers none of them and just becomes a sci-fi romp that shows off a vision of the future. What about the idea of whether there is any equivalence between a human baby “imprinting” onto its mom and that becoming “hardwired”, and the same process with a robot? The mom gave up the robot child too easily.
As usual, I felt manipulated by Speilberg. At first, the Osment David looks artificial (skin tone, etc.) but by the time he meets another David he looks really human in comparison, so we’re supposed to care about him and not the other David. I guess I was never able to give up the idea that these were all robots, and so I didn’t care about them. Again, a question, is pain inflicted on a non-human morally wrong? Does pain inflicted on a robot result in suffering or just pain? What does pain mean in that mechanical sense. I felt manipulated into feeling sorry for robots and resisted doing so. All I could think was, if that were a human, boy, would that smart.
As with many of his movies, he tries to cover too many themes and does none of them well. None of the questions of the differences between human emotion and programmed “emotion” were really resolved to me.
And while others were earnestly watching the ending, I couldn’t help snickering at the idea of 2000 years passing…symptomatic of a rather too large scope.
Maybe I didn’t see the same movie that everyone else saw… because I didn’t see any “happy ending”… the ending I saw was sweet but tragic–David would mourn for his mommy for eternity, having only that one day to look back on.
This is the only movie I can remember that still made me cry a full hour after I left the theater.
If the beings at the end of the movie could bring back people for a day, why in the world couldn’t they have made David a “real” boy, even if only for a singe day? All they needed to do is transfer David’s consciousness to a human body. It seems to me that this would have been an appropriate way to end the movie, given that it already had a fairy-tale type ending.
I don’t look at it that way at all. David wasn’t “mourning,” as you say, but he was completely content. Throughout the entire movie, all he wants is for his mother to love him. Once this is achieved, his “mission” is complete. I don’t think that he felt badly about his mother being gone, he simply felt satisfied that she had told him she loved him. Sounds like a pretty “happy ending” to me.
BTW - I saw the movie with my parents and little sister. My dad was trying to tell me that the ending was necessary and a good one. I have to admit that I thought that the meccas were aliens, but I can attribute that mistake to the fact that I thought the movie should be over and was shocked and disappointed by what was going on - not really paying close attention.
