"Bicentennial Man"
By Candie Kelty
During the summer I like to catch up on my movie watching. Sometimes I go way, way back and finally see some of those movies that I've meaning to rent for years but never got around to. The other day I watched The Bicentennial Man, which came out in 1999. It only took me seven years. When I write about movies that have been around for so long, I'm going to assume that I'm the last person left on Earth who hasn't seen the film and won't censor anything. Consider this your Spoiler Alert!
Bicentennial Man was a really sweet film. I watched it when I was just in the right mood, willing to sit down and go on a quiet little journey with the main character, an android named Andrew, played by Robin Williams. I haven't been a huge Robin Williams fan since the Mork and Mindy days. He's talented, sure, but Robin Williams and Jim Carrey are both so hyper they make me tense; tension isn't usually what I'm going for when I'm watching the tube.
Instead of bouncing off the walls, Williams was endearing and polite, and made you want a loveable robot of your own. Early on, I thought this would be a cute film to watch with my daughter. As always, Oliver Platt, who showed up later in the story, stole every scene he was in. I always wonder if the writers give him all of the good lines or is he just a genius with the delivery?
When I'm watching a movie, I get completely immersed into my "movie trance" so I judge a movie by how many times I'm taken out of the story, when something on the screen causes me to start pondering something other than what the director intended. Knowing that I was watching a film about a robot, I had already suspended disbelief, but was still unprepared for what was to come.
By the time I was already lost in the movie, it took an odd little turn. I am, by no means, an uptight person, but the thought of a robot getting equipped with a hydraulic wiener so he could boink his previous owner's granddaughter made me feel a tiny bit squirmy. They were in love, fine, the symbolism was not lost on me, but I'm going to be haunted by those implied scenes for a long time. When they showed Andrew eating food for the first time, a post-coital breakfast, all I could think about was what went on during the cut, imagining the sounds of servomotors and bedsprings. I was completely lost for the rest of the movie.
Did Andrew really become human? Or was he always a human trapped in the body of a robot? For that matter, was Frankenstein's monster human? He was made from human parts, does that make him more human than a creature that was made from inorganic materials? If a robot can become human, does that imply that there are people out there who are not human? Why is it so important to be human, can't you be something else and still have worth?
I'm not sorry I watched Bicentennial Man, I really did enjoy it. If nothing else, it's good to step outside my comfort zone now and then, and this film indeed did do that, but now I'm not so sure I'm going to show it to my daughter.
Bicentennial Man was a really sweet film. I watched it when I was just in the right mood, willing to sit down and go on a quiet little journey with the main character, an android named Andrew, played by Robin Williams. I haven't been a huge Robin Williams fan since the Mork and Mindy days. He's talented, sure, but Robin Williams and Jim Carrey are both so hyper they make me tense; tension isn't usually what I'm going for when I'm watching the tube.
Instead of bouncing off the walls, Williams was endearing and polite, and made you want a loveable robot of your own. Early on, I thought this would be a cute film to watch with my daughter. As always, Oliver Platt, who showed up later in the story, stole every scene he was in. I always wonder if the writers give him all of the good lines or is he just a genius with the delivery?
When I'm watching a movie, I get completely immersed into my "movie trance" so I judge a movie by how many times I'm taken out of the story, when something on the screen causes me to start pondering something other than what the director intended. Knowing that I was watching a film about a robot, I had already suspended disbelief, but was still unprepared for what was to come.
By the time I was already lost in the movie, it took an odd little turn. I am, by no means, an uptight person, but the thought of a robot getting equipped with a hydraulic wiener so he could boink his previous owner's granddaughter made me feel a tiny bit squirmy. They were in love, fine, the symbolism was not lost on me, but I'm going to be haunted by those implied scenes for a long time. When they showed Andrew eating food for the first time, a post-coital breakfast, all I could think about was what went on during the cut, imagining the sounds of servomotors and bedsprings. I was completely lost for the rest of the movie.
Did Andrew really become human? Or was he always a human trapped in the body of a robot? For that matter, was Frankenstein's monster human? He was made from human parts, does that make him more human than a creature that was made from inorganic materials? If a robot can become human, does that imply that there are people out there who are not human? Why is it so important to be human, can't you be something else and still have worth?
I'm not sorry I watched Bicentennial Man, I really did enjoy it. If nothing else, it's good to step outside my comfort zone now and then, and this film indeed did do that, but now I'm not so sure I'm going to show it to my daughter.
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