 Bicentennial Man (1999) Now, that is a serious racket: they charge you $3 to rent an extension cord. Someone at Radio Shack must be making a killing on this, and I'll bet it's that bitch Teri Hatcher. Actually, I have no beef at all with the delightful Ms. Hatcher, in fact I think she's quite talented, but I would go so far as to wager she's never set foot inside a Radio Shack in her life. What's more, the fact that she is not married to Howie Long, yet the commercials play off that general impression, is just enormously confusing. Mmmmm, tangents. I think I was supposed to be talking about Bicentennial Man. The fortuitous free extension cord provided the access, and my heart did all the rest. What a weeper it was! Pandering in nearly every respect, one-dimensional on every level, and shameless in its sentimentality. And I fell for every minute. Robin Williams plays a robot whose unique journey toward humanity is charted over the course of 200 years, with his involvement in one family's life (across generations) being the focus. Williams fortunately plays it pretty much evenly, with only a few moments of "Robin Williams being irreverent and hilarious" cropping up. That whole thing is getting so tired. Try this: watch Good Morning Vietnam nowadays and see if you don't cringe at the incessant "Robin Williams being hilarious; everyone else on screen laughing riotously" shit. The guy should really take a page from the Bill Murray playbook and try some subtlety for once. That said, I was still suckered in by every scene. Maybe it just caught me in the right mood, after a long day of flight delays and standby anxiety, and perhaps its stock was raised by the fact that it allowed a couple hours respite from the two miserable kids alternately screaming and pounding the back of my seat. It's not that I didn't see the flaws in the film at all; it's just that I seem to have become such a sap that the flaws did not matter. Williams starts out as a shiny new robot, who through some quirk of circuitry has the ability to learn, express creativity, and feel emotions. His owner, Sam Neill, quickly ascertains how special his robot is, and endeavors to better Williams's station by offering education apart from the daily butlering duties. This whole idea is a bit unsettling, as it really seems like a master/slave relationship, but the slave is Frederick Douglass instead of Lazybones Jiveturkey. (Points granted and immediately deducted for seeming intelligence and subsequent frustrating ambiguity of last remark.) The family slowly learns to accept the robot as a member of the family, especially Little Miss, played by the delightful Hallie Kate Eisenberg, who does not betray her uncanny ability to sound exactly like Aretha Franklin or Isaac Hayes at any point in this film. Her snotty sister does not accept the robot, because some people are just always racist toward robots, and prejudice runs deep, man. Over the years, Williams seeks to improve himself with technical upgrades designed to make him more human-like, i.e. facial features, real-feeling skin, and finally a pseudo central nervous system. His brain remains Positronic, though, so he doesn't receive full status as a human. These upgrades are executed with the help of delightful Oliver Platt, who does not sing at all during the film. The whole thing turns into a love story (with the robot falling in love with the granddaughter of his owner – dicey morality there, but whatever). Embeth Davitz plays both the grown-up Hallie Eisenberg and the daughter of the grown-up Hallie Eisenberg. (?) Davitz is charming, attractive, and can act her way out of a paper bag. She actually made me care about a lot of the dumb crap that was being forced down my throat, and allowed me to ignore things like the miserable "quirky" female robot character. There were some weird editing problems that may or may not have been related to this being an in-flight cut of the film – such as a particularly awkward scene where the mother grounds the oldest daughter, who mathematically would have been something like 25 at the time. And there were tons of things that were just real lazy, like the fact that all the people in this family seem to live at home throughout their lives until they get married. I suppose I would have really not cared much for this film at all had it not been free and well-timed, and were I not just such a sucker for romantic claptrap. But whatever. I still say it was a good movie, and if that means I've lost my edge, man, than sign me up for a one-way ticket to Dullsville (just don't make me fly standby).
Review by Dude |