Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1765 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-03-18
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Anamorphic, Box set, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Italian
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 145 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
History will place an asterisk next to A.I. as the film Stanley Kubrick might have directed. But let the record also show that Kubrick--after developing this project for some 15 years--wanted Steven Spielberg to helm this astonishing sci-fi rendition of Pinocchio, claiming (with good reason) that it veered closer to Spielberg's kinder, gentler sensibilities. Spielberg inherited the project (based on the Brain Aldiss short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long") after Kubrick's death in 1999, and the result is an astounding directorial hybrid. A flawed masterpiece of sorts, in which Spielberg's gift for wondrous enchantment often clashes (and sometimes melds) with Kubrick's harsher vision of humanity, the film spans near and distant futures with the fairy-tale adventures of an artificial boy named David (Haley Joel Osment), a marvel of cybernetic progress who wants only to be a real boy, loved by his mother in that happy place called home.

Echoes of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun are evident as young David, shunned by his trial parents and tossed into an unfriendly world, is joined by fellow "mecha" Gigolo Joe (played with a dancer's agility by Jude Law) in his quest for a mother-and-child reunion. Parallels to Pinocchio intensify as David reaches "the end of the world" (a Manhattan flooded by melted polar ice caps), and a far-future epilogue propels A.I. into even deeper realms of wonder, just as it pulls Spielberg back to his comfort zone of sweetness and soothing sentiment. Some may lament the diffusion of Kubrick's original vision, but this is Spielberg's A.I., a film of astonishing technical wizardry that spans the spectrum of human emotions and offers just enough Kubrick to suggest that humanity's future is anything but guaranteed. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

On the DVD: A perfect movie for the digital age, A.I. finds a natural home on DVD. The purity of the picture, its carefully composed colour schemes and the multifarious sound effects are accorded the pin-point sharpness they deserve with the anamorphic 1.85:1 picture and Dolby 5.1 sound, as is John Williams's thoughtful music score. On the first disc there's a short yet revealing documentary, "Creating A.I.", but the meat of the extras appears on disc two. Here there are good, well-made featurettes on acting, set design, costumes, lighting, sound design, music and various aspects of the special effects: Stan Winston's remarkable robots (including Teddy, of course) and ILM's flawless CGI work. In addition there are storyboards, photographs and trailers. Finally, Steven Spielberg provides some rather sententious closing remarks ("I think that we have to be very careful about how we as a species use our genius"), but no director's commentary. --Mark Walker

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Documentary on bringing AI to the screen
Interviews with Steven Spielberg, Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law
Newly produced behind-the-scenes featurettes on the making of AI
An interview with Sound Designer Gary Rydstrom at Skywalker Ranch
A visit to Stan Winston Studios with early "Teddy" footage
Interviews with Lucasfilm's ILM special effects group
Trailers, storyboards, drawings and hundreds of photos approved by Steven Spielberg for this release
Interactive menus
Scene access
And much, much more!

Languages: Audio Dolby Digital 5.1 English, French, Italian
Subtitles: English, French, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Romanian, Bulgarian
Hearing Impaired: English, Italian
Widescreen 1.85:1

Synopsis
A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is the story of David (Haley Joel Osment), the first mecha (a futuristic term for a mechanized human being) designed with the ability to love. A couple whose son is in a coma "adopts" David to help them recover from their loss. Naturally, things do not go as planned, and David is forced to leave the mother (Frances O'Connor) he's been "imprinted" to love, and make his way in the world. Traveling with Teddy, a hi-tech stuffed bear, David escapes the Flesh Fair, where angry humans destroy mechas to "purge artificiality," and unexpectedly befriends Gigolo Joe (Jude Law in a wry performance), a robot designed to pleasure women. Joe agrees to help David in his quest to become human.
Director Stanley Kubrick originally developed A.I., at one point asking Spielberg to direct it. When Kubrick passed away, Spielberg took the reins. Using a treatment and thousands of drawings commissioned by Kubrick, Spielberg wrote his own screenplay (his first since 1979's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND). Osment, perhaps the only pre-teen actor who can effectively convey existential angst, gives a marvelous performance, helping Spielberg create a gorgeous futuristic fairy tale that questions the very nature of what we call life.

Customer Reviews

No intelligence full stop!
I remember at the time my girlfriend harping on about this film, saying it was the best thing ever, she said I would love it! I watched it and as a result lost all confidence in spielberg as a director and also dumped the girlfriend, I couldn't look at her the same way again after the AI experience.
The thing about this film, is that you don't really like any of the characters, the world is painted as being such a bleak and selfish place that I just couldn't force myself to enjoy watching the film and just wanted it to end. When the end finally comes, well it's true testament that spielberg has definitely lost the plot in recent years. I'm sure it reads much better in the written form but AI is one to avoid.

Success has many fathers.... and this great movie had four!
I loved this movie. It may be not as magnificent as other Spielberg and Kubrick works, but it is still a great moment of cinema. I watched it with a great emotion and I was afraid for the little hero (or rather two little heroes - let's not forget Teddy...) from the beginning to the end. It made me cry twice, no matter how much I tried not to. It really reached deep into my heart as no other movie managed to do in years... So, there is no other possibility - five stars.
I agree however that AI is clearly a patchwork of ideas rather than one project. It is because this story was worked in all successively by four very talented but very different men.
It began as a short story ("Supertoys last all summer") by Brian Aldiss, a great name of British SF, known mostly for his magnificent "Hothouse" novel. As most of SF writers from 60s and 70s Aldiss was very pesimistic and his writings are usually rather sad and gloomy. His mark is clearly visible in the movie.
The short story was rewritten in a scenario by another great name of SF, Ian Watson, who of course left his own personal inprint.
The person who had the idea of making a movie about a modern SF version of "Pinocchio" was the great Stanley Kubrick. He never realised it however and when he died, according to his last will, the project went to Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg inherited a very sad, depressing and dark tale of suffering and despair and he simply couldn't realise it like it was. He changed the story, mainly removing the "horrible bad ending" and replaced it with a kinder "not so happy end" which so many reviewers didn't like. Well, me for one I think he was right because ending AI differently would give a movie that only a really bad person (and by saying this I really mean "a sadistic sociopath") could like...
You probably already know what this story is about - a robot child, who was programmed to love his foster parents and who wants just to be their child, nothing else... but even that little will prove to be too much to ask... No other spoilers.
Haley Joel Osment gives here a performance as brilliant as the one he gave in "Sixth sense". Jude Law and William Hurt are good in second roles. A great "star" of this movie is Teddy, a little teddy-bear robot, once a very expensive and cool toy, now obsolescent and falling in pieces... The scenes in which he is fixing himself with a needle and some yarn will probably touch the coldest hearts.
This is NOT a movie for children! I strongly warn you against watching it with them, unless they are at least 12. Some of the scenes are very disturbing (like the execution of "strays", robots which were abandoned or chased away by the owners) and even after the little Spielberg touch, this movie is still terribly sad....
All in all, I believe you should watch this movie, at least once - you will not regret it. And you can also use AI as a medical test - if the final scene doesn't have any effect on you, you should see a doctor....

Near faultless.
Thoughtful sci-fi story about a robot boy (played by Haley Joel Osment) who wants to become a real boy like in the story Pinocchio so that the woman who purchased him (whom he considers his mother) will love him like she loves her real son. An intelligent sci-fi tear jerker from Steven Spielberg who as usual knows exactly what he is doing. A near faultless movie - ruined only by subplots involving Jude Law that don't go anywhere and a final scene that I felt could have been a bit better - that is emotionally satisfying and far superior to I, Robot (a film with a similar theme of whether robots should be treated like human beings). Spielberg went on to make the also excellent Minority Report the following year, so he was clearly on a roll. Very nearly 5 stars out of 5.