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What a difference between these reviews and the perspective of David Bruce at Hollywood Jesus. Bruce offers the most detailed look at the film yet from the religious media; in his chapter-by-chapter reflection on the entire film, he sees an abundance of profound truth at work in the story: "The robots … represent those we have been dehumanized for reasons of ethnicity, jealousy, and exploitation. Additionally, the robots represent the people we dispose of when they no longer have perceived usefulness and desirability. It is about the tragedy of disposable relationships, one night stands, family breakdown, the slave trade and human exploitation. It is about the necessity of hope, faith and love. Without which there is no survival."

Likewise, Carole McDonnell, a guest critic at Christian Spotlight on the Movies, says the film "asks several moral questions: Would humans be better if God had programmed [them] and without free will? Are we responsible to those who love us? Does someone's love for us make us responsible to them? Especially if we caused someone to love us because we needed love at a particular time? And should we drop someone out of our lives simply because they are no longer needed?"

In the mainstream press, only a few felt strongly enough to either entirely endorse or condemn the film. The New Yorker's David Denby found the movie to be "a ponderous, death-of-the-world fantasy, which leaves us with nothing but an Oedipal robot—hardly a redemption. That Kubrick gave up on the human race will not come as a surprise, but Spielberg is a different story." Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum, however, was dazzled: "There aren't many … like Spielberg and Kubrick, directors willing to lasso dreams (that's Steven) and nightmares (that's Stanley) or die trying. A.I. is a clash of the titans, a jumble, an oedipal drama, a carny act. I want to see it again." Most found it to be a fascinating mix of strengths and weaknesses. John Zebrowski ofThe Seattle Times raves, " For every moment it frustrates, there are a dozen that amaze and provoke us, asking us questions about the meanings of life and love. How many Hollywood movies can you say that about?" Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert declares it "audacious, technically masterful, challenging, sometimes moving, ceaselessly watchable. What holds it back from greatness is a failure to really engage the ideas that it introduces." Mr. Showbiz's Kevin Maynard cautions viewers expecting warm-hearted family fare, "It's a childhood A Clockwork Orange. If you're up for something as dark as the Brothers Grimm can truly be, A.I.'s a trip worth taking."

Maynard joins a debate over the film's controversial closure: "The film's sappy epilogue diminishes the impact of the sequence that precedes it: an eye-popping, nightmarish underwater voyage." Ebert, too, is dismayed: "The movie's conclusion is too facile and sentimental, given what has gone before. It has mastered the artificial, but not the intelligence." Personally, I agree with the Chicago Tribune's Michael Wilmington, who says, "This ending—the bleakest of any Spielberg movie and the sweetest and most sentimental of any Kubrick—strikes me as far from happy. Instead, it's chilling, almost annihilating." But A.O. Scott of The New York Times admires Spielberg's final gamble: "Mr. Spielberg, with breathtaking poise and heroic conviction, risks absurdity in the pursuit of sublimity. [He] locates the unspoken moral of all our fairy tales. To be real is to be mortal; to be human is to love, to dream and to perish."

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July (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45