A.I. (thing)

Last warning! Spoilers ahead!!!

The basic concept of AI (at least the parts that really got to me) is that man has created artificial intelligence in robots called "mecas", right down to exact human response to stimulus, etc. Well, pregnancies are strictly regulated and must be licensed, etc. So, to fill this human need for children, a meca that looks like a child is created. This meca has a code that locks the meca into loving the adopted 'parents' with a complete, unchanging, never-ending love. The meca-child that the story follows is David, who is given to Monica and Henry. Monica and Henry have a biological son, Martin, who is in cryogenic stasis because of a deadly illness. Monica eventually decides to bond to David, and he starts seeing her as "Mommy" instead of Monica. Eventually, Martin gets cured and comes home. He is jealous of David and keeps trying to get him in trouble. It works, and Henry eventually decides that David needs to go back to the company that made him, so he can be destroyed. (Once a meca-child bonds to a human, the bond can't be broken, and the child has to be destroyed if the human doesn't want him anymore.) Monica can't bear to know he's going to be destroyed, so she takes him out in the woods to leave him there alone.

This is where I start going hysterical.

David is crying, pleading with Monica to please not leave him alone. He's sorry that he cut her hair, he's sorry that he broke himself by trying to eat spinach, he loves her, please Mommy, don't leave him alone. She tells him to stay away from humans, that only other mecas are safe and she runs away.

A big long search ensues for David, as he remembers the story of Pinocchio that he heard Monica reading to Martin one night, and that the Blue Fairy made Pinocchio into a real boy. David decides that if he can find the Blue Fairy, she'll make him into a real boy, and then Mommy will love him. This leads him into the company of Gigolo Joe (Whadda ya know). They are both in a "Flesh Fair" - a place for "orgas" (that is, organic humans, as opposed to mecas) to destroy mecas for fun. The mecas are pulled apart a la the rack, acid dumped onto of them, shot out of a cannon, through a ring of fire, and through a propeller, etc. This is to me a hideous reminder of the holocaust, and the current states of racial cleansing around the globe. This is the second place I start going hysterical, this time also with nausea and thoughts of "I can't watch this, I'm going to go wait in the lobby."

Anyhow, David and Joe end up escaping the Flesh Fair and get to a city where David can find out where the Blue Fairy lives. He's told she lives at the end of the world. Well, at this point, the ice caps have melted, leaving large sections of the world underwater. Including New York. Manhattan is now the end of the world, and is mostly underwater.

David finds his way to Manhattan and finds the man who created him there. He goes deep underwater and finds Coney Island, and the statue of the Blue Fairy. He starts praying to her, "Please Blue Fairy, make me a real boy." For 2000 years, David prays that she make him a real boy. Another ice age comes and everything is frozen again. Some 4-inch wide aliens show up, and dig David out. He touches the Blue Fairy and she crumbles. The aliens read all of David's memories, and recreate the house where he lived with Monica. He runs through the house and can't find anyone, even though it looks just as it always did. The aliens tell him that they want him happy, and can bring back people from his time period, if they have some physical part of the person. David still has some of Monica's hair and the aliens say they can bring her back, but there's a catch.

It can be for ONLY one day. Everyone they bring back dies after they fall asleep at the end of their first day. David says that he doesn't care, bring her back anyway.

David and Monica have the perfect day together, with no worries in Monica's mind and no problems to distract them.

At the end of the day, Monica is falling asleep and she hugs David and whispers, "I love you, David. I've always loved you." David starts crying; this is all he has ever wanted. To know that Mommy loves him. That was the purpose of his entire search for the Blue Fairy - he only wanted Mommy to love him. And now, he knows that she does.

By this point, I am in complete hysterics , and trying vainly to keep myself quiet so I don't disturb the other people watching the movie.

I spent the next couple of hours in hysterical tears. As soon as I got home, I woke Mom up and hugged her and told her that I love her. I told her about the movie, and she just held me and rubbed my back like she did when I was 8 and scared by a bad dream.

Wretched, wretched movie.