A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

★★★★1/2

In the future, a family, grieving after their son’s near-fatal illness, decides to “adopt” a young robotic boy who has been programmed to feel love by means of artificial intelligence. However, when the family’s son is cured, the robotic boy is abandoned in a forest by the mom and begins a journey to find the “blue fairy” (from which he heard from the Pinocchio story) that can grant him the wish of becoming a real boy so that his mother could love him. This haunting, beautifully directed film is sad, heartbreaking and compelling. It raises several questions about what love is and if it’s possible for machines to love and vise versa. It’s a heart-wrenching story of trying to become ‘real’ and it’s told through the eyes of a child. It’s creepy because we begin to believe that this boy is real. Haley Joel Osment is phenomenal but I hated the ending because it didn’t bring the closure I wanted.