Released: 2001
Drama, Sci-Fi
Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor
Director: Steven Spielberg
Running Time: 146 minutes
Rated PG 13 for sexual content and violent images
The breakdown:
In the future robots referred to as "mechas" do all sorts of things for people. Servants, maids, sex robots, and now for the couple who cannot have children, a robot child who always stays young and always loves you. This movie focuses on one child whose love is very real, but the child is not. He longs to be a "real" boy so that his mother will return his love.
I could talk forever about how much I love this movie and how much it means to me.
I am rarely ever so passionate about a movie, especially a movie that centers around a child, but this is one of my top 5 movies of all time.
First off I should say this movie is loosely based on a short story by Brian Aldiss called "Supertoys Last All Summer Long". The short story actually starts a small series of 3 short stories about the same character and it doesn't go the same way the movie does, but I like both on their own.
In the movie a robot prototype called David (Osment) is being developed to be sold to couples. (What is implied is that couples cannot have anymore children then are allowed - most likely one to a couple. In the book there is a strict population control.) Once a couple is ready they give David a certain specific series of words and once that happens the child bonds to the "parent."
I should mention here that robots are not just robots. They are referred to as mechas because they are a bit more than just robots. They are capable of emulating thoughts and emotions and are humanoid in form.
A couple, Henry & Monica Swinton, have one birth child, Martin, but he is in a cryo state and they're not sure he'll ever be cured of a life threatening disease. Henry, who is an employee of the company developing David, decides to bring home to his wife Monica, a David as a test for his company. She tries him out for a couple weeks and likes him so she decides to bond with it through the password process. David immediately changes after the process and calls Monica mommy and tells her he loves her.
Monica and David get along well enough. She warms up to him though the process is slow for her. She plays with him and reads him bedtime stories, and one really sticks with him....The Adventures of Pinocchio. David also has a "super toy" called teddy. He's the most adorable teddy bear I've ever seen and I sooooo want one! Teddy walks and talks and is pretty smart for just a little stuffed animal.
As fate would have it, Martin is cured of his disease and comes home. There is a struggle from the children for the mothers attention but Monica truly only loves Martin and eventually a series of events makes David look unstable. Martin really doesn't like David. Martin tricks David into thinking it's a good idea to take a lock of Monica's hair. So when Monica awakes to see David with huge shears near her head she thinks he's dangerous. There is also an incident where David's self protection mechanism is turned off at a pool party and David clings to Martin for protection. They fall into the pool together and since David is so heavy, he sinks to the bottom with Martin. From the outside it looks like David is trying to kill Martin, but that is not true. Henry convinces Monica to return David to the company that made him to be destroyed, but she can't. Instead, on the way to driving him back to the factory, she drives him into the middle of the forest and releases him, but he doesn't understand what she's doing. She abandons him telling him to go in only one direction or else "they" will catch him. She drives off and that's the last we see of her.
David is confused, and roams the forest alone with only Teddy for company.
He eventually is caught in a huge net with a lot of other broken mechas and hauled off to a Flesh Fair. This is where humans take out their aggressions of robots out on robots by destroying them. A little girl notices David and the owner of the fair thinks he's a real boy and lets him out. (At this point, the world has never seen a child mecha.) The crowd reacts to the almost murder of what they think is a human child and revolt. There's pandemonium and a lot of the robots escape.
David meets Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a male sex mecha, and they stay together for quite a bit of the movie. Joe has been framed for murder and is on the run from the authorities. Joe educates David on why humans hate them so much. David wants to know why his mother didn't keep him or love him and Joe cannot answer these questions. He suggests they go to something that has all the answers.....Dr. Know because there's nothing he doesn't (know). Dr. Know is voiced by Robin Williams and is a memorable part of the movie. David asks about the blue fairy in Pinocchio making him a real boy and where to find her so he can become real too. This specific question triggers a poem to be read that David's creator has programed into Dr. Know should David show up there looking for answers. It tells him to go to New York (not outright, but cryptically and Joe figures it out). At this point in time, the polar ice caps have melted and drowned the coasts of the United States. To get to New York, they need a helicopter, in the movie it's a mix of helicopter and amphibian vehicle that's referred to as an amphibicopter. Joe and David steal one and Joe takes them there. They end up at the top of Rockafeller Center in Manhattan, though all you can see now is a ruined flooded city where only the tops of the highest skyscrapers are visible. This amount of flooding has also greatly reduced the human population, most likely another reason machines have been built to take the place of humans in some situations.
David finds his creator, played by William Hurt, and is told that he was a test. His creator goes on to explain that many of him are in production as well as a female version. He is shown that he is a robot and that thousands of Davids are in boxes ready to be sold. This angers David that he is not unique, and he gets violent, running out of the creators office. He sits depressed, on the edge of the skyscraper and tries to kill himself by falling off the edge into the water. Joe sees this and takes the amphibicopter into the ocean to save him. David sees what he believes to be the blue fairy under water, but it's really just a statue of the character from a long drowned Coney Island. When Joe retrieves David, he tells Joe he must go back under the water, but then the authorities find Joe and pull him away with a gigantic magnet. David is left alone with Teddy in the amphibicopter to go into the ocean. They sink to the sea bottom floor and stare at the statue for a long long time. Teddy and David are then trapped when a huge ferris wheel falls onto the amphibicopter. David continues to ask the blue fairy for his wish to come true to become a real boy until the ocean freezes over and his battery dies.
This is the point where if you haven't seen this movie and you even slightly want to (which I highly recommend you see it) you cannot read anymore of this post. The
spoiler is coming up and I cannot finish this post without finishing the movie so if you don't want to know the end, STOP READING NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, I see you've seen the movie, well, ok then.........
This next description is debatable. I know the first time I saw the movie in theaters, I thought the characters were aliens, but with research I've realized that they are actually highly evolved mechas and that the human race has somehow become extinct.
Ok, so the end,
2,000 years after David's battery dies, you see the Earth is covered in solid ice. A large metal cube is racing above the terrain of Earth. These highly advanced mechas (though they look like our current perceptions of aliens) discover David and Teddy in the amphibicopter at the bottom of their icy dig site. They revive them and David immediately goes to the statue of the Blue Fairy to touch it, but it crumbles as it was frozen and extremely fragile. The advanced mechas download all of David's memories and realize he is the only one that knows of humans. He is special, one of the "originals" they call him.
The mechas recreate the Swinton home and explain to David, using an interactive image of the Blue Fairy, that they cannot make him human. They can however, bring a human back to life, but only for one day and only with a sample of their DNA. Teddy just happens to have the lock of Monica's hair that David cut off so very long ago, and David insists that they bring her back.
And suddenly it is morning, the mechas tell David Monica is just now waking up, but that her memory will be blurry and not to upset her by telling her the truth. David spends the entire day with her and her alone, and is the happiest he has ever been in all of his existence. When it's time for bed, Monica says what David has longed for for so very long. She tells David she loves him and that she has always loved him. She closes her eyes never to wake up again, and David lays next to her. He closes his eyes as well and goes "to that place where dreams are born." To me this means, David dies since robots/mechas do not sleep, and do not need rest.
This movie gets my best rating - 5 out 5 because it couldn't be any more perfect.
I can easily say I have never been more emotional at the end of any film before or since seeing this movie. I put my head into my hands and cried uncontrollably. The person I was with was oblivious to my reaction and wanted to leave, but I honestly couldn't even stand at that point. I know that a lot of people were either confused or disappointed with this ending. I can say, I think it's perfect and no other movie has ever made me feel like I got a punch to the stomach like this. I suppose my strong reaction is because for my whole life as well, I have wanted nothing else but to be loved in return just like David's character. I felt very close to David and as baffled as he was at the lack of his mothers true love, I have been baffled by lack of love in my own life. For him to finally get it at the end, is very satisfying to me, and very emotional. Love is such a simple and hard thing to get really. If you ever find true love in your life that lasts, you are extremely lucky. I've only seen it once in my own life and it was very fleeting and slipped away from me, devastating me in the process. It was 10 years ago and something I have not even begun to accept or recover from.
