BICENTENNIAL MAN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Isaac Asimov's story comes to the
screen with the best of intentions, but there is
just a little too much warmth and sweetness for
most adult audiences to fully appreciate it. A
robot who is already nearly perfect struggles to
become human. Robin Williams and Embeth Davidtz
star. Pleasant without being satisfying.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4).
In the year 2005 a father (Sam Neill) surprises his family with a new robot (Robin Williams) whom his family dubs Andrew. But there is more to Andrew than just Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics. The laws make certain that Andrew is benevolent, but he is considerably more. He has a streak of creativity and independent thinking that supposedly robots do not have. Rather than being an appliance, he has the rudiments of actually being human. The family has two daughters. One who is simply called Little Miss (Hallie Kate Eisenberg as a child and Embeth Davidtz as an adult) immediately takes to Andrew while older daughter Lloyd immediately wants to see Andrew discredited and destroyed. The father comes to take a fatherly interest in Andrew. We see Andrew doing some very human things like showing compassion for a spider and trying to master the complexities of human humor.
Racial themes enter the story as a human woman comes to love Andrew and he loves her in return, but Andrew is only a machine becoming human. It is years before a real romantic relationship is possible between him and a human. But robots are essentially immortal and as the title implies, we see Andrew over the course of two hundred years. This means even though it is a longer than average film, 131 minutes, it still covers superficially mostly only the more important events of Andrew's life. It seems almost as soon as you meet characters they are old and dying.
One thing the film does not handle very well is the view of society during the passage of so much time. Change is coming to our society at an accelerated rate. One need only look at the rate at which our own society has changed in the last 40 years. Forced with showing the changes in society over 200 years or ignoring them, the producers have almost entirely had to steer clear. We see minor and superficial changes, but not nearly the amount we would expect. We are left with an uneasy feeling that society has stagnated, but for some relatively small advances in the sciences relevant to the story.
Even when Isaac Asimov's story "The Bicentennial Man" was first published, it far from original. Asimov had been writing for years about benevolent robots who were misunderstood. Ray Bradbury wrote the story "I Sing the Body Electric," produced on TWILIGHT ZONE, about a family getting a grandmotherly robot and learning to love her. Asimov combined this and with some more complex themes for his novel. However, the wish to become human and the slow transition to fulfilling that wish was plundered from the novel and used very publicly in STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION with the character Data. The viewer has agonized over Data's attempt to learn to deliver humor and it seems unfair to make the viewer do it again. That and much more of Data's difficult road to becoming human is recapitulated in this film. Like STAR TREK, this film never questions the smug assumption that being human is the highest state of being. At its best BICENTENNIAL MAN holds up a mirror to show us what it means to be human. But where it rings false the writers fall back on Andrew being a robot. That makes its observations undependable.
Some of the visuals are very good, but some are surprisingly flawed. In particular the futuristic skylines are unconvincing. If Andrew behaves too much like Data, he also looks a little too much like C3PO. Kudos should, however, go to the design of the robot makeup and mechanism. The faces maintain the look of metal and still are expressive to what is perhaps an unrealistic level.
Not surprisingly, this is Robin Williams's film. Somehow his attempts to be a normal human are touching but never as powerful as Cliff Robertson is in the comparable film CHARLY. Sam Neill, after this film and THE DISH, seems to be vying for the title of the mellowest actor on the screen. Embeth Davidtz has a harder role than Williams. If Williams does not seem quite right, well, he is a robot. Davidtz is quite good as a human, which is harder. Young Hallie Kate Eisenberg, known for Pepsi and Independent Film Channel ads, is her usual sweet self falling a little short of being cloying. Oliver Platt is always watchable. Chris Columbus directed and previously directed Williams in MRS. DOUBTFIRE. James Horner's score is unremarkable.
While this film does not have all the resonance that a film aimed at an adult audience should have, it should be good for a young adult audience. I give it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 2000 Mark R. Leeper
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews