I thought A.I. was one of the most interesting movies I've seen this year; I wondered why it didn't get more critical attention.
Jude Law gives a great performance in the movie. And Haley Joel Osment is uncannily good, once again (I think a person would be hard pressed to come up with even a handful of adult actors who, over the last three years, have acted in two roles that reach the level Osment reaches as "David" and "Cole Sear").
For those two performances alone the movie is worth seeing. For an added bonus, you get to see a flick that makes all of mankind the movie's bad guy for the first two hours and then, in the last half-hour, jumps forward two thousand years to give a weepy post-mortem retrospective on the species.
The film is disconcerting and probably designed to be so. But its portrayal of humankind is a little one-sided, and almost inhumane. Humans appear as jack-booted thugs, nazis, etc. Humans are cruel, capricious, and sometimes downright wicked. With the exception of one major scene by minor characters at the "flesh fair," I can't think of anyone human who does something redeeming in the film.
The mother abandons David; the father never has any meaningful relationship with the android and pushes for its destruction; the human brother's basic treatment of his new "brother" is almost entirely motivated by jealousy and cruelty; anonymous humans chase and want to destroy David; Professor Hobby's motivation to create David, a loving nearly-sentient creature, is sparked by pride rather than love or responsibility.
Even the backdrop of the movie is due to a mistake by man, global warming -- a mistake that appears to eventually destroy it. If David is, as you say, a repository for the good in man, it's a small repository amid the obvious failings of our species shown in the movie.
Humans may find some redemption in the end, but it's a mock redemption. David has one final perfect day with a lobotimized clone mother set up -- not by humans themselves -- but by friendly aliens. Still, who says that mankind (or at least one of its members) must be portrayed well in all the movies? I thought the movie was interesting precisely because its shows man failing to live up to his creations.
