Subject:
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Re: Bicentennial Man (spoilers, and quite lengthy)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 29 Dec 1999 21:08:49 GMT
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Viewed:
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1162 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> c /Azimov/Asimov/ (getting the master's name right takes you up a notch on my
> "credence-o-meter" when discussing his work :-) )
Aagh! I've been revealed as a fraud! Actually, I was trying to maximize the
Scrabble value of his name, and Z is worth more than S! Anyway, "the
master?" Hmm... I can't quite get behind you on that one, I'm afraid, but I
do enjoy his stuff.
> I confess to a bit of shock at your perception. What a radically different
> perception than mine! As I said, I found it to be one of the best movies I've
> seen in a long time. I had a great deal of "sense of what Robin Williams'
> character really has at stake" all the way through it. But then, perhaps our
> aesthetic and emotive thresholds are different. I also did say that I expected
> 80% of the viewers not to get it. Perhaps you're in that bracket.
Maybe you're just an old softie! 8^)
My initial post was a little off-the-cuff, but I'll try to elaborate here.
As far as unevenness, I loved the film up until the father's death, after
which the pace sort of fell apart on me. That is, the first 20(?) years of
Andrew's life took the first half of the film, while the last 180 years took
the second half. As a result, some of the more interesting potential character
developments were missed, while others simply vanished.
What happened to the mother, for instance? The film established tension
between Andrew and her and seemed (during the "laughter" scenes) to imply a
forthcoming resolution, which never occurred. The older daughter likewise
disappeared after making a stereotypical older-rebellious-daughter appearance
on the motorcycle and at the wedding, returning only for Sam's deathbed
without any mention made of if, how, when, or why a reconciliation took
place. Obviously, Andrew doesn't need to have witnessed her transformation,
but to throw her back into the family without a word said about it simply begs
the question of how it happened, especially when all indications suggested she
was accelerating away from the family.
From there, I'm afraid, the film just worsened for me. Rhetorically, and in
terms of narrative, I thought Andrew's quest for others like him was
interesting, even if only as a device to demonstrate his uniqueness and for
getting him to Platt's character. Thereafter, though, I was less convinced.
Each further step in his evolution, it seemed, was as easily executed as
conceived. "I want skin," Andrew decides, and so he gets it. "I want
organs," he decides, and so he gets them. "I want a nervous system," he
decides, "I want functional genitalia," and so on. Never did it seem to me
that there was any difficulty in achieving these fundamentally transformative
goals, even with the weakly-implied groundbreaking research required for each
new step. Worse, I had no sense that Andrew was passing points of no return,
or that he was risking anything in making the transformation. It's one of
those nothing-ventured-nothing-gained deals, where his gain is cheapened by
the fact that he (seemingly) risked nothing.
What happened to the dog? As Andrew's only friend for a presumably
considerable length of time, I was surprised that it only appeared for about
10 seconds and than vanished (like so much else in the film) without a trace.
Especially considering that Wolfie implied a direct link to Lil' Miss v1.0,
it's strange that it wouldn't serve a more important role, or at least
something more than an afterthought. I would rather Andrew had held onto the
stuffed animal than a flesh-and-blood dog whose only function was to provide a
single one-liner. The stuffed dog, moreover, could have been a more subtle
and interesting indicator of time's passage than whiz-bang CGI shots of San
Francisco and its nifty hovercars.
I flatly didn't believe the romance between Andrew and Lil' Miss v2.0, much
less the implied several decades they spent together. Did nothing noteworthy
happen during this time, so that nothing had to be represented except a single
chess game and a wistful gazing out the window while discussing their aging?
What's the deal with the offhand mention of a "DNA elixir?" That's probably
the most stupendous invention Andrew had come up with thus far in the film,
but it occupied _no_ screen time, or at any rate far less time than clever,
attention-grabbing surgical scenes.
Several critics, who I grant are no particular authority, offered somewhat
scathing reviews:
http://www.cnn.com/1999/SHOWBIZ/Movies/12/21/review.bicentennialman/index.html
http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/movies/movie155.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/entertainment/movies/reviews/bicentennialmanhowe.htm (sorry--too long)
http://www.eonline.com/Facts/Movies/Reviews/0,1052,73747,00.html
And, finally, this quick review from David Ansen in Newsweek:
One could describe this movie as the story of a woman (Embeth Davidtz) who
falls in love with a household appliance (Robin Williams). But that would make
it sound funny. While there are a few good jokes scattered about, this is,
alas, yet another of Williams's earnest attempts to make us all Better, More
Sensitive People. Cast as an android with unusually human proclivities (he
listens wistfully to opera), the actor has made the first touchy-feely robot
movie. The tone of director Chris Columbus's moist, disjointed film is hushed
and reverent, as we follow Andrew the android's 200-year quest to achieve full
humanity. Many homilies follow. Eventually our hero sheds his metallic mug,
starts looking a lot like Robin Williams with a good tan, and has sex with the
great-granddaughter of the woman who first owned him. Kids will be bored, the
rest of us baffled.
Again, critics have no sovereign wisdom on these matters, but I have yet to
read a favorable review of this film.
> How old are you, if you don't mind my asking?
Twenty-eight, for good or ill. How old are you?
All in fun,
Dave!
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Bicentennial Man (don't bother)
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| (...) c /Azimov/Asimov/ (getting the master's name right takes you up a notch on my "credence-o-meter" when discussing his work :-) ) I confess to a bit of shock at your perception. What a radically different perception than mine! As I said, I found (...) (25 years ago, 29-Dec-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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