Another BAD movie from Spielberg who loses no opportunity to trivialize a movie.

Rating: 6/10 (22 June 2002)

Think Tron and Blade Runner meet Minority Report. Steven Spielberg creates a Science Fiction film noir a la Blade Runner and Tron. Unfortunately, as always, Steven Spielberg has to trivialize and Hollywoodize the movie, leaching and bleaching the life, substance, and darkness out of it. This film is in the style of AI Artificial Intelligence, but better; unfortunately not good enough for me to recommend it. As always in a Spielberg movie, when he has the chance to add lowbrow humor to a scene, he does. After a while the cumulative effect of these cheap laughs and snickers (yes, the full movie house snickered to the visual gags), is to destroy the dramatic integrity of the movie. He should review Blade Runner, Dark City, and PI to see how a futuristic film noir can be made. As he has demonstrated in AI, and this movie, he does not know how to do it.
So much is wrong with this movie: the cinematography is bleached out so it looks like a comic book printed on cheap paper, the music score is derivative (he even used Beethoven!) and detracts from the movie, the acting is one dimensional with comic book style characters, and worst of all he tacks on a glowing pretty Hollywood happy ending at the last couple minutes of the movie. Sad, hard to believe he is considered one of the great film directors. I have yet to see a good movie of his, though I must confess I usually miss his movies knowing they tend to be sappy and lacking in substance. NOT recommendedunless you like Spielberg's style.