Bicentennial man

It will remind you a bit of ET. A poignant story of a person, in this case a robot, trying to fit in, wanting to belong, looking for accep...

It will remind you a bit of ET. A poignant story of a person, in this case a robot, trying to fit in, wanting to belong, looking for acceptance. But this film is not another ET, it is just a remote resemblance.

And unique robots do unique things. For example they have bank balances and their own house and things like that. The more Andrew discovers, the more he changes. Life for him becomes all about wanting to be accepted as the person he is and not just be brushed aside as a robot. The Martin family adore him, but somewhere deep down they realise that “he is just a machine” and that no one “invests their emotions in a machine”.

Andrew wants all that to change and he travels the world to be able to do that. To cut a long story short, he manages everything. Even falls in love and can express it. But his fight to be labelled a human continues, right till the very end.

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This meandering film loses its initial charm midway. What was cute in the beginning becomes monotonous towards the end. The polite robot becomes Robin Williams (personally, we like the robot better) and the script a love story.

You will have to wait 200 years for Andrew to get what he wants. These 200 years translates into very long drawn scenes in the movie. And it doesn’t help to have to keep track of three generations of the Martin family. While everyone gets old and dies, Andrew just goes on and on and on……

ANURADHA NAGARAJ