★★★½ Rewatched 29 Apr, 2023

I’m not as impressed as I was when I saw it when it came out but it remains a very well-crafted futuristic story about what will most likely happen when artificial intelligence becomes part of our lives. AI has become one of the top media and public consciousness topics in the last few years because the internet and advances in processing power have made it possible for the self-learning process to make a significant jump over the efforts even 10 years ago. 

I respect and admire both Spielberg and Kubrick. I can understand why Kubrick thought Spielberg would be the better choice for director given his history, namely E.T. and Empire of the Sun, in regards to following a journey of a young boy through the perilous world of adults. Their movies share a technical proficiency and seemingly instinctive knowledge of the filmmaking process. From the interviews, I understand that Kubrick felt the story needed a more emotional approach (Speilberg) as opposed to his more clinical way of looking at things. On paper, it should have been a perfect blend, but for me, the tone didn’t work or flow as it should. Robots are not supposed to be emotional, so the clinical approach makes more sense, while the story necessitated the boy robot to act emotionally as he has been programmed. In that respect, the movie does a good job in a few scenes showing the robot’s lack of understanding and taking into consideration the context of the situation which would necessitate an emotional response (scene at the dinner table and another by the pool).

There is a lot of food for thought here, still 20+ years later, but as an emotional journey, the movie did not rub me the right way as a Spielberg movie or a Kubrick movie. I feel they should have stayed in their own corners and in this case of almost lost treasure, there was a good reason the movie was not made while Kubrick was alive.

P.S. During the filming the studio set up a live “bagel cam” in the food truck. There was an always-present moderator who would explain who stopped by, chat with the viewers, and answer questions. Various members of the crew came by to have a drink and a snack and even Spielberg himself dropped by a couple of times. I have fond memories of watching and chatting through most of the streaming. This is how it looked like:

Source: Letterboxd
Info: IMDb