ai

The weekends DVD was AI, which was directed by Steven Spielberg, but was actually pretty much developed by the late, great Stanley Kubrick.

And I have to confess I found it to be a bit of a mixed bag.

The AI of the title is of course Artificial Intelligence. Specifically, he film is set in a future where the Poles melted and bits of the world sunk into the water. This triggered a bit of a global disaster and as a result people in the western world can only have children if they get a license to do so.

However, technology has also advanced dramatically and robots (it's odd that the film never uses the word android, which is the common name for a humanoid robot, but does the Japanese term Mecha) now look and pretty much act like humans. It's never really said, but the feeling I got was that labour is therefore cheap and easy, presumably supporting the reduced human population levels.

Anyway, these humanoid robots are perfect except in one regard - they're not capable of feeling emotion. Except that's where the story really starts - one of the companies is just on the cusp of building an actual feeling robot.

The niche this fits into seems to fit into is that of children - childless couples can buy one f these feeling robots that, a bit like a newborn chick, will implant on the parents and be capable of feeling love and other emotions like a real child would.

This of course opens up a huge minefield of potential problems and issues and it's these that the film explores. In particular, the first child developed is given to a couple whose son is crippled and kept in cryo stasis as they can't heal him. Only of course they do, so now the couple have their robot boy, but also their real boy.

The grand parallel of the film is Pinocchio - the wooden boy who wanted to become real. But there are also a lot of complicated issues that are explore din the film. So you have a section where those who have reacted against the robots destroying them at a 'flesh fayre'. Then you have a support character who is essentially a gigolo robot. And all the while you've got a robot who is exploring and coming to terms with his new emotions and what the implications of those are.

And as far as that film went I thought it was really good. There's a genuine attempt to explore the complex issues and the circumstances and their conclusions.

But then when you get to the last half hour of the film it takes what I can only really describe as a sharp sideways turn.

I won't spoil it in case you haven't seen it, but it really is a little odd.

And I was rather conflicted. The problem was that, logically, it did sort of work, but it also opened up all sorts of other questions that never really get answered. It also doesn't hang together as well from a scientific point of view where the earlier part of the film does.

But what's worse is it gives an ending that I found somewhat touching, but also ultimately unsatisfying.