

http://www.speakers-podium.com/susangranger.

Susan Granger's review of "BICENTENNIAL MAN" (Touchstone Pictures)
        The last time director Chris Columbus teamed with Robin
Willliams they came up with Mrs. Doubtfire but, if you're expecting
this to be a slapstick kids' flick, think again. Adapted from a short
story by Isaac Asimov, it chronicles the life of a NDR-114 robot who
begins as a household appliance in 2005, created "to perform menial
tasks: cooking, cleaning, making household repairs, playing with or
supervising children."  Dubbed Andrew by the youngest of the family's
children (deep-dimpled Hallie Kate Eisenberg) who cannot pronounce
"android," he soon begins to show creativity, curiosity, and
compassion, confounding his manufacturer and launching a 200-year
quest to discover his humanity. Nicholas Kazan's thoughtful screenplay
cleverly explores the technology of artificial intelligence as it
integrates with human behavior but, since it follows a family for
several generations with only Andrew as a connective, it involves too
many characters, several with literary-allusion names like Galatea and
Portia.  Plus, there's a constant awareness that underneath the
plastic prosthesis, there's comical Robin Williams, desperately
itching to emerge. Sam Neill scores as Andrew's original owner, as
does Oliver Platt as a bio-tech designer who becomes Andrew's friend.
It's interesting that, just like Woody in Toy Story 2, Andrew makes a
choice between pristine immortality and the inexplicable vagaries of
humanity but, unlike that magical fantasy, children under 10 will
quickly be bored or depressed by the insipid depth of this 2-hour,
13-minute saga. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, Bicentennial
Man powers up to a surprisingly serious, existential 7, as a poignant
parable of what it means to be human.