A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: June 29, 2001 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
21
Mixed:
8
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Pure magic, a three-act movie fantasy that transports us -- as the best films do -- to a world of its own, a place of ambiguous joy and delirious terror.
100
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
A film that might make you cry watching it is just as likely to give you the creeps thinking about it afterward, which is as it should be. Read full review
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The movie is exactly what it's billed to be: the successful blending of two distinctly different filmmaking sensibilities from two different generations. But the stronger, and more pessimistic, sensibility -- Kubrick's -- carries the day. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
There aren't many at all like Spielberg and Kubrick, directors willing to lasso dreams (that's Steven) and nightmares (that's Stanley) or die trying. A.I. is a clash of the titans, a jumble, an oedipal drama, a carny act. I want to see it again. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
The result is fascinating -- a rich, strange, problematical movie full of wild tonal shifts and bravura moviemaking. Read full review
90
The New York TimesDana Stevens
(Spielberg) tells the story slowly and films it with lucid, mesmerizing objectivity, creating a mood as layered, dissonant and strange as John Williams's unusually restrained. modernist score. Read full review
90
VarietyTodd McCarthy
This is not "E.T.," nor is it a kid's film nor even necessarily a major mass-audience film, although Spielberg's name, high public anticipation and the child-oriented campaign will make it perform like one. Read full review
80
TimeRichard Corliss
A.I. will beguile some viewers, perplex others. Its vision is too capacious, its narrative route too extended, the shift in tone (from suburban domestic to rural nightmare to urban archaeology) too ornery to make the film a flat-out wowser of the E.T. stripe. Read full review
80
Mr. ShowbizKevin Maynard
Actually, it's a childhood "A Clockwork Orange," a reverent realization of the late Stanley Kubrick's final obsession.
75
New York PostJonathan Foreman
Audiences may find that the deliberate, Kubrickesque pacing -- without his intellectual rigor -- causes them to tune out.
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
This is speculative, heady stuff, far removed from traditional Hollywood summer entertainment, which alone will earn A.I. a devoted following. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Most of its features work fine, and it will dazzle you with its tricks and illusions. But it is not what it claims to be on the package. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Be warned that the violence-prone Spielberg of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List" is also on display. Read full review
75
USA TodayMike Clark
This is a movie to be knocked, chewed and gummed, but not dismissed. It's the first 2001 release I've rushed to see twice. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Audacious, technically masterful, challenging, sometimes moving, ceaselessly watchable. What holds it back from greatness is a failure to really engage the ideas that it introduces. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeJay Carr
Spielberg has said that in their collaboration, cut short by Kubrick's death, Kubrick had opened his heart as never before. Although the fingerprint of each is upon A.I, there are times when the prints are blurred and merged. And this film will blur the hitherto distinctive profiles of each.
70
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Whether audiences are pleased or vexed, very vexed, by A.I., any movie buff worth his salt will want to sift through this fascinating wreck of a movie. Read full review
70
SalonCharles Taylor
For everything wrong with it, A.I. is not a dismissible film. It's too richly imagined, too accomplished. Even as he botches the emotions and the issues he raises, Spielberg goes headlong into them, wrestles with the picture's conflicting impulses. It's the kind of screw-up you get only from a master filmmaker. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The skill involved holds us in our seats, the project's inability to transcend its built-in limitations keep it from achieving the kind of overarching impact it is after. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Less a movie than a seething psychological bonanza. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerDesmond Ryan
A fascinating but flawed work that demonstrates that, contrary to popular wisdom, great minds do not think alike. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
It's one of the weirdest achievements in film history: Temperamentally, Spielberg and Kubrick are such polar opposites that A.I. has the moment-to-moment effect of being completely at odds with itself. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not credited)
A slickly crafted fable, however dark, but it's shot with haunting poetry. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephen Hunter
The result is fascinating, if uneven and ultimately rather silly. Problems with the ending, so common these days, dog this visionary film as well. Read full review
50
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Intriguing, inspired, flawed, misbegotten and fascinating -- all of these qualities apply to the movie, at one point or another. Read full review
50
SlateDavid Edelstein
What's a shock is the crudeness with which Spielberg fills the scenario in -- how he neuters his protagonist and short-circuits the inner workings of his human characters. Read full review
50
New Times (L.A.)Robert Wilonsky
It's by turns poignant and cold, twisted and sweet, dreamy and drab, effortless and overwrought. In short, the movie is a stunning, ambitious mess that leaves you wondering how much better it might have been without Kubrick's specter peering over Spielberg's heavy shoulders. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
What we're left with -- Kubrick or no -- is a muddled, messy disaster of a film, something that seems more like a drastically edited miniseries, cut down to incomprehensible levels with whole sections missing. Read full review
40
L.A. WeeklyManohla Dargis
Spielberg's infidelity to Aldiss (and perhaps to Kubrick, who knows?) would be pardonable if it didn't ruin his movie. In the end, he has failed to make a persuasive, smart movie about robots and people. Read full review
38
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Ends up neither fish nor fowl. It's a misanthrope's "E.T."
30
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
A grim disappointment for grown-ups, and far too violent for young kids. I found it to be clumsy, misanthropic and intractably lifeless.
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
By the end 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 Kubrick combined with the fuzzy, cuddly mindlessness of Spielberg. Read full review
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