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Review by Susan Granger
3 stars out of 4
The last time director Chris Columbus teamed with Robin
Willliams they came up with Mrs. Doubtfire but, if you're expecting
this to be a slapstick kids' flick, think again. Adapted from a short
story by Isaac Asimov, it chronicles the life of a NDR-114 robot who
begins as a household appliance in 2005, created "to perform menial
tasks: cooking, cleaning, making household repairs, playing with or
supervising children." Dubbed Andrew by the youngest of the family's
children (deep-dimpled Hallie Kate Eisenberg) who cannot pronounce
"android," he soon begins to show creativity, curiosity, and
compassion, confounding his manufacturer and launching a 200-year
quest to discover his humanity. Nicholas Kazan's thoughtful screenplay
cleverly explores the technology of artificial intelligence as it
integrates with human behavior but, since it follows a family for
several generations with only Andrew as a connective, it involves too
many characters, several with literary-allusion names like Galatea and
Portia. Plus, there's a constant awareness that underneath the
plastic prosthesis, there's comical Robin Williams, desperately
itching to emerge. Sam Neill scores as Andrew's original owner, as
does Oliver Platt as a bio-tech designer who becomes Andrew's friend.
It's interesting that, just like Woody in Toy Story 2, Andrew makes a
choice between pristine immortality and the inexplicable vagaries of
humanity but, unlike that magical fantasy, children under 10 will
quickly be bored or depressed by the insipid depth of this 2-hour,
13-minute saga. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, Bicentennial
Man powers up to a surprisingly serious, existential 7, as a poignant
parable of what it means to be human.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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