Bicentennial Man
Bicentennial Manwas stung at the 1999 box office, due no doubt  in part to  poor timing during a backlash against Robin Williams and his treacly  performances in two other, then-recent releases,Jakob the LiarandPatch  Adams. But this near-approximation of a science fiction epic, based on  works by Isaac Asimov and directed, with uncharacteristic seriousness of  purpose, by Chris Columbus (Mrs. Doubtfire), is much better than  one would have known from the knee-jerk negativity and box-office indifference.Williams plays Andrew, a robot programmed for domestic chores and sold to an  upper-middle-class family, the Martins, in the year 2005. The family  patriarch (Sam Neill) recognizes and encourages Andrew's uncommon  characteristics, particularly his artistic streak, sensitivity to beauty,  humor, and independence of spirit. In so doing, he sets Williams's tin man on  a two-century journey to become more human than most human beings.As adapted by screenwriter Nicholas Kazan, the movie's scale is  novelistic, though Columbus isn't the man to embrace with Spielbergian  confidence its sweeping possibilities. Instead, theHome Alonedirector shakes off his familiar tendencies to  pander and matures, finally, as a captivating storyteller. But what really  makes this film matter is its undercurrent of deep yearning, the passion of Andrew as a convert to the human race and his willingness to sacrifice all to  give and take love. Williams rises to an atypical challenge here as a  futuristic Everyman, relying, perhaps for the first time, on his considerable  iconic value to make the point that becoming human means becoming more like Robin Williams. Nothing wrong with that.--Tom Keogh