Bicentennial Man (1999)

Directed by Chris Columbus. Starring Robin Williams, Embeth Davidtz, Sam Neill, Oliver Platt, Wendy Crewson, Kiersten Warren, Stephen Root, Angela Landis. [PG]

Lackluster sci-fi fable starts in the near-future with the arrival of a robot butler (Williams) at the Martin household. The android, given the name of Andrew, demonstrates creativity, humanity, and the facsimile of emotion for no apparent reason, and as the decades pass (twenty of them, to be specific), it/he not only becomes a valued member of the Martin family but even falls in love with the great granddaughter (Davidtz). Pseudo-ambitious and frustratingly superficial, the screenplay (by Nicholas Kazan, based on a story from Isaac Asimov) has lots of half-formed ideas, but no interest in seeing any of them through, ultimately biting off more than it can chew in a little over two hours. Worse yet, the tone turns gooey as the story progresses (pretending to be interested in the philosophical meaning of life and death, but operating in a purely sentimental fashion), and the one-note human characters are of such easily formattable types that the only way we can be sure that they’re not all a bunch of androids themselves is because they’re all eventually covered in not-always-convincing old-age makeup. Genteel enough to be suitable for the whole family, but too plodding for most of them to enjoy. Director Columbus co-produced, as did Wolfgang Petersen (initially attached to direct himself).

35/100