Movies that made you angry

[gratuitous]

34. A.I.

According to what I've read, Stanley Kubrick worked for years to try to pull off a movie out of a short story called "Supertoys Last All Summer Long." After Kubrick died, Steven Spielberg picked up the project, and demonstrated irrefutably why Kubrick couldn't make a movie out of the story.

SPOILERS: Husband and wife have an eight-year-old son. Sonny has a near-drowning experience and lapses into a coma. The couple are distraught, but Husband works for this toy company that's working on a prototype robot that mimics a human boy. Husband brings the monstrosity home to Wife, who is initially horrified (as she should be) by the robot. However, as the robot pads around after her, Wife eventually relents, and activates the robot's "human" mode by reciting a series of unconnected words (Woman, Man, Person, Television, Camera, or something like that). Robot becomes Boy and the family feels whole again for a little while. Naturally, Son comes out of his coma about this time, and the family realizes too late that they're one member too big, and Boy is outcast. The rest of the movie unspools from there as the audience contemplates either leaving or suicide.

The horrible thing about Robot is that it's 8 years old. Next year, it will be 8 years old. Ten years from now, it will be 8 years old. Robot will never get older, will never develop, hit puberty, graduate high school, fall in love, get married, or anything. It will be 8 years old forever. When you're 63 and you've just stubbed your toe on the coffee table, and you're hopping around in agony, here comes Robot with drawing number 8,941 in a never-ending series of juvenile drawings of "Mommy and Me" and get out of my way, you little shit! Mommy needs tylenol!

Thinking about the premise of the story for more than five seconds, anyone should see this gaping hole in the plot, and it pisses me off no end that Spielberg picked up this project and the studio actually brought it to market. I may get over it if I outlive Spielberg by 2 hours and 26 minutes.