I finally broke my streak of terrible movies with AI (*** 1/2), starring Haley Joel Osment. This after seeing and hearing a bunch of negative reviews.

Nowadays with most types of entertainment I see myself as a grumpy old man. I stop reading books because they suck, turn off the TV when there's a bad episode, and walk out of movies. So it's strange I'd like a movie so many people hated.

Science fiction fascinates me because of its ability to raise significant moral questions in a concrete way. It's one thing to ask, "if the human race creates a being with feelings, what are our responsibilities?" but it's quite another to see the murderousness then love of life of Roy Batty in Blade Runner, or the pride then madness of a malfunctioning HAL in 2001.

In AI, as a replacement for their extremely ill son, a couple is given an artificial child who can love them. In fact, he is forever bonded to them once they decide to keep him, and they're told if they don't want him after he is bonded to them, he must be destroyed. The real son gets well and the mother decides to abandon the artificial child. The artifical child, David, spends the rest of the movie trying to become human to win back his mother's love.

Excellent work by Spielberg, with fantastic performances by both Osment and Jude Law. When we create artificial life will we treat it as subhuman?