Bicentennial Man

So you thought that the previews for this movie made it look like a really bad kids’ movie about a robot who wanted to be human? Kind of like Disney 2000?

Well, actually (and I just found this out today) it’s based on an Isaac Asimov short story/novel about a robot who, in the attempt to become human, learns that immortality and non-feeling may not be so great after all.

Andrew (Robin Williams) is delivered to the Martins’ house one day in 2005. He’s a typical android in every way except one. He is creative. When he drops a glass horse that belongs to the youngest daughter who he calls Little Miss (Pepsi girl Hallie Eisenberg), he carves her a new one out of wood without the help of a design. He just makes up a design that would be pleasing to her “love of tiny mammals.”

After this, Mr. Martin (Sam Neill) takes Andrew to the company that built him and talks to the president, Dennis Mansky (Stephen Root from Office Space and “News Radio”), about the phenomenon. It turns out that Andrew’s personality is an anomaly that they would be more than happy to study and then replace Andrew. Sam will have none of that and makes sure that they can’t touch his new friend.

So time goes on and people get old and die, but Andrew stays the same. For a while, anyway. He gets a new face that will allow him to show more emotion when Little Miss (now played by the lovely and mostly-talented Embeth Davidtz from Schindler’s List and Army Of Darkness) gets married. Even later, while looking for more of his kind, he finds Rupert Burns (Oliver Platt), an ousted scientist who is experimenting with flesh androids. Strangely enough, no one will fund him. Too close to home. (I actually think it was the fact that, while he’s molding Andrew’s face, he makes Robin look like he did in Popeye. That would scare me off, too.) But Andrew, who has been making money off of his sculptures and clocks, will. And thus begins the part of the movie where Robin actually looks like Robin. And he starts to really turn human.

At a little over two hours this movie drags occasionally, but, given the previews, I was pleasantly surprised. Not as good as it could have been, but still not as bad as it looked.

First off, Robin doesn’t go over the top like he has been lately. I really liked Good Will Hunting and What Dreams May Come, but he seems to be playing the emotion chip a little much lately. Hence, Jakob, The Liar. (I haven’t seen it, but I haven’t met anyone who really liked it. One guy actually said that it was the first Holocaust movie that didn’t make him feel sorry for the Jews. The characters, that is. Not the race.) Since he couldn’t cry, he wasn’t allowed to emote like he usually does.

The supporting cast is good. Sam and Oliver are always great to watch. Even in their old makeup. (I always knew Oliver Platt would make a great Orson Welles.) Embeth Davidtz, playing both Little Miss and her grand-daughter, was very good in two sort of one note roles.

The whole point of the story, of course, is to call to mind a few questions on what exactly life is. With all of the artificial intelligence that we are trying to design now, will we eventually create a new life? And will the new life be able to deal with its own immortality? Is that immortality a problem that the new life will want to solve? And, in the end, what is life?

Although I wonder how bad it would be sometimes to not feel anything. There are certain feelings I would like to never feel again. You know, pain, heartbreak, the feeling of that metal hook that the dentist uses, the feeling of a (What’s it called?) ball-peen hammer being hit against your head. Stuff like that.

I guess the real problem with the film besides its length was the fact that Chris Columbus directed it. Nothing against the guy, but he shouldn’t be doing moral sci-fi. The movie was so schmaltzy that I felt like I was being controlled more than Andrew was. I’m sure Asimov didn’t put this much sap in his pages. The music was always telling me when I should be crying and when I should be laughing. I’m sure I laughed at the wrong times every once in a while. And I never cried. No. Really, I didn’t! I never cry at movies! Shut up!!!

And then there’s the fact that none of the old makeup was really convincing. Every once in a while there was a shot that looked good, but you could tell that Oliver had been caked with stuff. And not everyone goes grey at the same age. Come on.

But, the movie wasn’t bad. Not great. Not even particularly good, but not really bad.

And any movie that includes the old joke “A Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, ‘Make me One with everything.’” is ok with me.