Bicentennial Man (Movie)

Bicentennial Man

Director : Chris Columbus
Writer : Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Nicholas Kazan
Robin Williams - Andrew Martin
Embeth Davidtz - Little Miss / Portia
Sam Neill - Sir

In one off Isaac Asimov’s three autobiographies, “I, Asimov”, he states that the second best story he ever wrote was “Bicentennial Man”. I am a big Asimov fan and have read every novel he has ever written, but “Bicentennial Man” was one of his short stories and not being a fan of the genre, I never got around to reading it. When I first heard that a “Bicentennial Man” movie was being made, I was excited by the prospect and put it high on my list of movies to view.

Then the reviews came out.

“Bicentennial Man” was panned by just about every reviewer and fans in the Asimov news group seemed to universally hate it. Suddenly, it wasn’t a “must see”, and I postponed viewing it until this weekend, when it finally on appeared on cable.
So is it as bad as everyone said it was?

Well, not really but I think the director made three big mistakes that turned this movie in to something less than what it could have
been. I’ll discuss those mistakes shortly, but first a summary of the story.

“Bicentennial Man” is the story about a robot, Andrew Martin, who is purchased by a rich man, Sir, to serve as household servant for his family.

In the beginning, the family believes that Andrew is just a robot, a mechanical man programmed to serve but lacking intelligence or a soul. Then, Andrew accidentally breaks a glass horse that is coveted by the youngest daughter, and to make it up to her he sculpts her a beautiful wooden horse. This is quite out of line with the expected behavior of a robot, and after some investigation by Sir, it is determined that there is a defect in Andrew’s positronic brain that has endowed him with human feelings and emotions. Most of the rest of the story deals with the relationship between Andrew and the youngest daughter, and the feelings that Andrew must deal with when those around him grow older and die while he remains immortal.

For the most part the movie was enjoyable and worth watching, but as I mentioned earlier, there were three things that I felt kept it from reaching it’s full potential.

The first problem was casting Robin Williams in the part of Andrew. Williams, is much too big of a celebrity and the character of Robin Williams, overshadowed the character of Andrew. I never really believed in Andrew, and could never get past the feeling that I was watching Robin Williams pretending he was Andrew. In a movie where the emotions and feelings of the lead character are central to the story, the director would have been much better off casting an unknown for the part, allowing us to get closer to the character without first having to get by the actor playing the character.

Another problem with this movie was the use of easy jokes and gags. To lighten up the movie, a lot of scenes were added that involved Andrew screwing up or saying something inappropriate, because he did not quite understand what was going on. I felt this didn’t really work, since it was obvious that Andrew was much too intelligent to be making these gaffes. The scenes seemed contrived and felt like something you would see in a cheap sitcom. If fact, a lot of this these jokes seemed like they might have been left over from Robin William’s old show, Mork and Mindy.

The final problem with this movie is that it tried to cover to much time. The story took place over a two hundred year time span, and even with a movie length of over two hours, it seemed rushed. Whenever I felt like I was getting involved in the plot, they would suddenly end the scene and jump to a time in the future. This left the impression that I wasn’t watching one movie, but instead a series of back to back mini-movies. I felt it prevented me from ever becoming fully engrossed in the plot.

If your looking for a movie to rent that will give you a couple of hours of entertainment, then Bicentennial Man will do just fine. If your looking for something a little deeper, keep looking.

7 out of 10 Stars

Posted by Al on 01/10/10 at 10:24 PM in Movies