Benji Cooper was sick of his school. He was always the odd o, and the st person to be selected in a, be it sports, academic projects, or something artsy. He just didn’t get along with kids his age. Not to mention, his school had a little bullying problem that he found himself on the wrong end of sometimes.

  But all that could be easily fotten when he did what he loved: watg movies. It was an escape from reality for him, living in the world of movies that took him anywhere from different po magical fantasy nds. Heck, earlier this year, he had even enrolled in a dance css after watg [Billy Elliot] five times. In his mind, if Troy Armitage could do that, why couldn’t he? They were the same age, after all.

  That turned out to be a blessing in disguise for him because he made some good friends in his css, and he wasn’t that alone anymore. He gave all the credit to Troy for that. If it hadn’t been for him, he wouldn’t have goo see [Billy Elliot] and wouldn’t have sidered a dance css at all. A movie that ged his life made him more eager to watch more films iheater with his parents. So from then on, every Saturday, he and his parents would go to the movies.

  He was a little disappoihat he could not see Troy at the films every week, but his mother expio him how long it took to make one movie. So he did what he could. He waited.

  And after months on end, finally, it was time for Troy’s film to be released: [A.I. Artificial Intelligence]. No one could be more excited than Benji. Whehe trailer came oV during the ad break, he watched it without exception. The cept was very cool because Troy ying a robot in a future world where global warming had ged society a lot.

  Benji’s father said that the film would not be as good as [Billy Elliot] or even [Harry Potter] because the reviews of the film weren’t that good, but he didn’t care. He just wao see the film.

  So that’s exactly what he did. As soon as the film opened in June, Benji went to see it with his parents.

  The film opens with a stist expining how global warming has caused a huge rise in sea levels and wiped out coastal cities all over the world. Govers across the world have implemented lised pregnao fight overpopution. To pensate for this, stists create a series of robots known as “mecha,” who don’t require as many resources to survive as humans do.

  David (Troy) is one such mecha, but he is unique for he is the only robot child programmed to love his parents. Then Henry and his wife Monica are introduced, whose son Martin is in a a until a cure is found for him.

  To cope with his wife’s grief, Henry applies to Cybertronics' beta-testing as chosen by Hobby to test his test iion, a child meamed David. This robot is a prototype mecha child programmed to experience love.

  Benji was fasated to see how the dystopian world of the movie unfolded. Troy was fantasti the film as usual, and Benji felt bad for the robot who wanted nothing but acceptand unditional love from his family. But the harsh reality was that he would always be sed to the ‘real’ son, Martin, who had woken up from his a.

  Feeling jealous of David, Martin maniputed him into doing things that he knew would get David in trouble, like cutting Monica’s hair. Ohio another, culminating in Martin being dragged to the bottom of the pool when David felt threatened by Martin’s friends. Eventually, Monid Henry decided to abandon David, but at the st moment, Monica ged her mind a him in the forest.

  Only then the grim reality of the world is revealed as David finds out the deplorable dition of abandoned robots. He is almost ‘killed’ in a flesh fair, where robots are destroyed publicly as a spectacle, but he is saved only because he looks and acts like a kid, and people ’t bring themselves to destroy a little boy.

  He goes te City to find the Blue Fairy with a called Gigolo Joe. (When Benji asked his mother what a gigolo is, that’s what she said it was: a .) David had learned about the story of [Pinocchio] and the Blue Fairy from Martin, and he also wao bee a real boy so Monica would accept him. In Rouge City, using some money Monica gave him, David learns from a program that the Blue Fairy is at the end of the world, which just happens to be Manhattan, New York.

  David and Joe reach the wastend that reviously Manhattan in a stolen helicopter. After the trouble with the sea levels rising, the remaining pieces of the city are left in ruins and uer.

  Finding the pce they were meant to go, David is shocked to find a child who looks exactly like him. The other David simply smiles and invites him to read with him, saying that he’s real, but the first David thinks this guy is going to repce him. Furious, David grabs a mp and smashes it against the table and the other David's head, revealing that it's also a mecha.

  At that moment, Professor Hobby shows up to stop him and assures David that he's a real boy, g that he is his own Blue Fairy. Everything was orchestrated explicitly by the older man to lead David to Professor Hobby.

  Afterward, David enters another room, where he finds several more mechas that look like him, including ohat is still open. Several boxes are id out as David and his female terpart are mass-produced to be sold.

  Realizing that he was never unique, David heads outside and drops into the water as Joe watches from the helicopter.

  Benji felt like g for poor David. His entire life was fabricated by someone else. He didn’t even know what was real and what was not anymore. Should he sider himself real and unique, or just a product to be sold in supermarkets like a toy?

  Thankfully, Gigolo Joe finds him and saves him using the helicopter's extended arm. Once he’s out, David realizes that he found the Blue Fairy uer. Unfortunately, before they go further, Joe is suddenly magized by a police helicopter h above them. Then David activates the helicopter's submarine mode before floating away.

  Determio find the Blue Fairy, David pilots the transformed helicopter into an abandoned submerged ival. They watch all the attras representing fairy tales aually discover [Pinocchio], which he follows until he finally finds the Blue Fairy statue. At that moment, the Ferris wheel colpses on top of the helicopter, trapping them. David doesn’t care though; he only has eyes for the Blue Fairy and begs her to make him a real boy. However, the Fairy doesn’t respond, and years pass with David still stu there, never losing hope evehe lights begin to die off.

  Two thousand years ter, the world is enveloped in id snow, and humans have beeinct for a while. One day, an alien spacecraft shows up and flies around Manhattan as they ize the phey move David's helicopter, finding him on the ice.

  They quickly reactivate him. Upon waking up, David notices the Blue Fairy in front of him. He immediately gets out of the helicopter and approaches the frozen statue while the alieures watch him, theouches the Blue Fairy, causing it to crad break in front of him.

  The aliens use this ce to s David's memory to uand the p better, and suddenly David finds himself sitting at the table in Monica's house. The home looks exactly the way he remembers it, and David eagerly searches for Monica, but it’s a different voice that replies. David is surprised to find the Blue Fairy alive and talking and asks her to turn him into a real boy, but she admits that she ’t do that. The aliens use the Blue Fairy to speak to David, inf him that Monica is gone and the Fairy ’t revive her either because her remains are long gooo.

  While David mourns, Teddy, a toy bear that had been apanying him from the start and had survived the passage of time, approaches him to remind David of the time he cut Monica's hair and reveals that he kept that same lock of hair, meaning the aliens could n back his mother. David goes to his old bedroom and fondly remembers his friend Joe while Teddy repairs himself.

  At that moment, they see a figure at the door and think it's Monica, but it’s actually an alien that fesses to being fasated by humans. He wishes t humanity back by using anic traces to e them, but unfortunately, all his tries have failed so far because the es only live for one day. This will also happen if they bring Monica back. David still holds on to the hope that Monica will be special like him and st forever like he did while trapped in the helicopter, so he goes looking for her.

  He finds her in her bedroom and begins to cry while brushing hair from her face. At that moment, Monica wakes up and greets David with a warm smile. Now for this one day, David and Monica spend some time together. David happily shows Monica paintings of his jourhey py hide and seek, and they celebrate his birthday too. When the lights outside grow dim, David tucks Monito bed, worried that she won’t wake up.

  Suddenly Monica tells him she loves him, which makes David smile in a mix of grief and joy. Then he decides to sleep o her, reag his dreams for the first time in his life.

  As the closing credits rolled, Benji couldn’t help but wipe away the tears that had fallen during the st few minutes of the film. He didn’t know why he was g, as some parts of the climax were a little uo him, but he khat what David felt for Monica wouldn’t be ahan what Benji felt for his own mother. So did it matter if he was a robot? In his opinion, David was as real as real could be. He felt angry on behalf of David that he had to gh so mud even then he couldn’t live with his mother forever.

  “Hey champ,” someone raked a hand through his hair. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, Mom,” he smiled through his tears. “I am now.” Then he surprised his mother by hugging her. “Don’t ever leave me.”

  His mother couldn’t help but choke back a sob before hugging him back tightly. “Of course, I won’t, honey.”

  (Break)

  Across North America, the UK, and Japan, [A.I. Artificial Intelligence] was released iers at the end of June 2001. The critics' reviews were on the lower side of the spectrum for a Steven Spielberg movie.

  ‘The intriguing story draws us in, thanks in part to Armitage’s exceptional performance, but takes several wrong turns; ultimately, it just doesn't work. Spielberg rewrote the adaptation Stanley Kubriissioned of the Brian Aldiss short story [Super-Toys Last All Summer Long]; the result is a curious and unfortable hybrid of Kubrid Spielberg sensibilities.’

  —Leonard Maltin, [Movie Guide]

  ‘[A.I.] exhibits all its creators' bad traits and none of the good. So we end up with the structureless, meandering, slow-motion endlessness of Kubribined with the fuzzy, cuddly mindlessness of Spielberg. The only saving grace is Troy Armitage’s captivating performance.’

  —Mick LaSalle, [San Francisco icle]

  ‘Spielberg ot live up to Kubrick's darker side of the future.’

  —Peter Travers, [Rolling Stone]

  ‘Greatness and miscalcution fight for s spa Steven Spielberg's [A.I. Artificial Intelligence], a movie both wonderful and maddening. Troy Armitage, who is ons in almost every se, is one of the best actors now w. His David is not a cute little boy but a cute little boy mecha; we get not the lovable kid from [The Sixth Sense] but something subtly different.’

  —Roger Ebert, [Chicago Sun-Times]

  ‘[A.I.] will beguile some viewers, perplex others. Its vision is too capacious, its narrative route too extehe shift in tone (from suburban domestic to rural nightmare to urban archaeology) too oro make the film a ft-out wowser of the [E.T.] stripe. [A.I.] boasts a beautiful tral performaroy Armitage, 12, pys David with a kind of buoyant gravity.’

  —Richard Corliss, [Time]

  So, while most critics were unsure whether to ud the movie or deride it, ohing they unanimously agreed on was that Troy Armitage gave a wonderful performance as David. Yet, the audience didn’t seem to like the movie even as much as the critics. While kids seemed to like the movie, the adults, who took part in movie surveys, didn’t. Resultantly, it received a emaScore of a scale from A+ to F.

  On Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored 76%, with an average rating of 6.60/10, while Metacritic gave the film a score of 65 out of 100.

  Despite all the mixed reviews, one couldn’t ignore a major factor in the movie: Troy Armitage. Aside from his terrific performano one could deny that in his few short years in the industry, he had developed a dedicated fan following of his own. Not just in the US and the UK, but across the world. The release of films like [The Sixth Sense], [Billy Elliot], and [Harry Potter] had made him a household name. If even that wasn’t enough, his numerous industry awards and the test troversy about his home life had ehat everyo least knew of him. And as they say, no publicity is bad publicity.

  People were curious to know why the media was rushing behind a kid as if he was Tom Cruise. So that curiosity turned into a desire to see for themselves what the kid was all about.

  The result was that the opening weekend of [A.I.] was a bumper success in all three tries where the film had been released, defying all expert expectations. In the US alo minted 15.9 million on the opening day across 3,242 theaters. Followed by 18.3 million and 17.0 million on the remaining days, this gave an opening weekend figure of 51.2 million, almost twice the expected 26-28 million. Simirly, it earned 30 million and 25 million respectively in the opening weekend in the UK and Japan, bringing the worldwide colle to a staggering 106.2 million, against a budget of 100 million.

  As weeks passed by, the colle could not be sustained forever because unlike [Billy Elliot], [A.I.] wasn’t a crowd-pleaser film. Resultantly, the North Ameri colles fell to 30 million in the sed week, followed by 19 million, 15 million, and 7 million in the following weeks.

  In the ing months, the film was released in other tries as well, with its biggest markets being Germany, Spain, France, Brazil, and Mexico.

  At the end of three months from its initial release, the film had earned 172 million in North America, 84 million in the UK, 90 million in Japan, and 115 million in the rest of the world, bringing the total box office colle to a staggering 461 million, making the film a resounding success.

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