From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sat Jul 07 2001 - 14:16:09 MDT
Damien Sullivan wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 09:58:15PM -0700, Zero Powers wrote:
> > >From: Max More <max@maxmore.com>
> >
> > >At 07:37 AM 7/5/01, Natasha Vita-More wrote:
> > >>
> > >>2. Teddy, every moment.
> > >
> > >I didn't have the raisonettes, but my #3 would be the few seconds where the
> > >vehicle split apart. Very nice effect.
I too liked Teddy too. I expect to see massive Teddy merchandising this
summer with chatbot technology.
> > >
> > >Apart from that, I can't think of any moments that I enjoyed much.
> >
> > I'm an easy mark for any movie that goes that far out into the future. As
> > long as it's moderately believable I'll enjoy it. My favorite scenes were
> > at the frozen end where the humans are gone and the AI's have inherited the
> > earth.
> >
> > I thought the bit where they downloaded David's memories and instantly
> > shared them by touching each other was kind of cool. But at the same time I
> > was thinking "what, hundreds of years into the future and we still haven't
> > perfected the wireless network?"
>
> 2000 years. And, 'bandwidth'. If David's mind takes 10^14 bytes, touching
> (they seemed made out of optical material, after all) could be more effective
> than blatting through the air.
>
> Plus, it makes it clearer to the audience what's going on.
Thats right.
My own review:
I took my parents with me to see what reaction a couple folks in their
60's would have, one of whom is a devouted catholic, the other is an
engineer.
Mum loved Teddy, saying he was the one redeeming character in the movie,
otherwise,"It was the absolutly most idiotic and unrealistic movie I'd
ever seen, it isn't even good as a fairy tale", in her words. She also
liked when Gigolo Joe would snap his head to start playing background
music. I think her Catholic sensibilities were repelled at the idea of
robots being used as sex toys...
Dad thought it was 'an interesting look at what could happen', and
likewise liked Teddy, but wasn't very impressed otherwise.
As for myself, I thought it was a very good movie, and the special
effects were very tasteful and apt. What I didn't like was that I didn't
see Monica and Henry as being very good characterizations. Her sudden
conversion to 'imprint' David was not realistic, especially, and her
abandonment of David was not believable. I imagine that one or two
scenes of Henry demanding David be gotten rid of after the pool incident
likely wound up on the cutting room floor. This was IMHO a bad decision
in editing.
Other criticisms: when David arrives at Prof. Hobby's office, his whole
breakdown is unrealistic, or demonstrates a huge blunder on the part of
Hobby in his design. I think that considering that the plans for the
David design were to mass produce him for millions of childless
families, it was a stupendously stupid move to not embed him with a
means of rationally dealing with other Davids that he might meet in the
future. Also, Hobby's strategy of dropping that riddle into the Dr. Know
network as the only clue to lead David home, subjecting him to the
problems of the world strike me as heinously negligent and downright
cruel, especially given that Hobby and his associates were discussing
their responsibility in the very first scene of the movie.
Moreover, the idea that a computer like David would be so flawed as to
believe so strongly in a fairy tale is completely unbelievable.
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