"The Bicentennial Man" is based upon Isaac Asimov's short story of the same name and upon the book "The Positronic Man", co-written by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverburg. The story begins in 2005 and is the story of Andrew, a robot, sold as a household appliance that can do household chores. The robot's designation is NDR-113, and it is just one of thousands or millions of models of NDR-113 that have been made. But something in Andrew is different. Andrew acquires a bit of humanity, a bit of emotion, and he changes into something a bit more than what he was meant to be. This film follows Andrew through 200 years of his life.
The film opens with an indistinct NDR-113 being delivered to the household of Sir (Sam Neill) and his family. The robot is given the name "Andrew" (Robin Williams) by the youngest member of the family, whom the robot will call "Little Miss" (Hallie Kate Eisenburg). When Andrew accidentally breaks a treasured toy belonging to Little Miss, he studies books until he is able to carve a new toy and present it to Little Miss. This begins Andrews journey and quest for humanity.
Other important characters in the film are Embeth Davidtz as grown up "Little Miss" and "Portia", Wendy Crueson as "Ma'am", Oliver Platt as "Rupert", and Gerald Adams as "Steven Root".
The progression of Andrew from robot to almost human is interesting and at times compelling, and clearly brings up the question (as was intended) of what it means to be human. There are also very clear similarities and references to slavery and discrimination in the United States and elsewhere, and again these were fully intended by the film makers. But being intended doesn't make them any less valid, any more so than if this film were about African Americans in the 1850's.
Probably the biggest downfall of the film is how Andrew looks. He never really looks like a robot. In the first half of the film, while Andrew still looks like a robot, it's always very clear that there's a man in a robot suit. (Personally, I found C3PO of the original Star Wars a more convincing robot.) He face has little expression, and even later, when he gets an "upgrade", his face still doesn't have the range of expression a human face does. I mention this because about mid-way through the film, Andrew gets his first major upgrade, one that allows him to look more human. However, Rupert (Oliver Platt) explicitly says that this is purely an external upgrade -- in other words, nothing changes but the skin. But suddenly, Andrew has a full range of expression in his face. This didn't fit with what we had been told.
We never feel the emotion we need to feel in this film. We like Andrew, but we never really feel the affection for him we need for this film to truly succeed. At the end, we're left with a bit of emotion, but not with the depth a great screenplay would have given us.
It's also a bit jarring to have Embeth Davidtz play two roles. Not too jarring, as we're rooting for her and Andrew to become romantically involved in each of her characters, but still it seems too much a fiction to really work. It would have been better to bring in a new actress for one of the roles to give us a clearer sense of how much time is really passing. With the same actress in both roles, we're instead given a way out of the grief that Andrew feels with the loss of friends over time.
By the way, this is only a science fiction film in name. Other than Andrew himself, we see little of the world, and see almost nothing of how the world changes over the 200 years of the film. In fact, at one point about fifty years after the film begins, we see a world that seems almost devoid of robots, the opposite of what I would expect. We're never told of any revolt against the idea of using robots, yet we see only a few, and they're all as old as Andrew. Where are the new models? Fifty years after the introduction of robots, most people above poverty level should be able to afford one (or more than one). Yet the only robots we see are those made from the same mold as Andrew. In the end we see one other robot who gets human-like skin and facial expressions, but it is not clear whether it's a special case or one of many.
For Robin Williams fans, it definitely worth seeing. For others the choice is less clear. It's a good film, but it's not a great film.
The following isn't really a part of the review, but given our current state of technology, it seemed reasonable to make a few further comments.
Some of the questions posed are ones we may be asking ourselves far sooner than some might anticipate. Admittedly, I don't foresee technology progressing as far as an NDR-113 in the next five years, but I could well be wrong. One simply has to take a look at what is available now to wonder how soon something similar to an NDR-113 will be available.
Aibo is a robot dog made by the Sony Corporation. When it arrives on your doorstep it is a "puppy", and as you interact with it, it learns. It responds to affection and discipline, and goes through several different emotional stages. No, this isn't a joke. I doubt you can buy one right now, as there was a limited production, but about six months ago you could plunk down your $3500 and have your very own robot dog.
Mitsubishi has made a robot that walks like a human, using two legs and feet and the same technique humans use to walk -- controlled falling.
With these things here and now, and the tremendous advances computer technology makes each year, I don't believe it will be long before robots as household appliances are a reality. They'll start small. In fact, they already have. For about $800 you can buy a robot that will vacuum your floor while you are out. It's intelligence is quite low, in fact so low that it has no real decision making built in, but it's there. Oh, it can do other things as well, but vacuuming my floor is the one that appeals to me. More complex tasks like loading the dishwasher or cooking are much further away. They have very complex decision trees. But feeding the dog or cat? Walking the dog? Serving guests? These all can have fairly low decision complexity and creating a robot that could do these things would be moderately simple.
The biggest current problem is that while creating a robot for one task is fairly simple, it's also fairly expensive. However creating a robot that can do many different tasks is much more complex, but the final product would not be proportionately more expensive. When that $800 robot can do ten things on command instead of one, people will buy them.
And as computers become smaller and more sophisticated, who knows? Robots are often tethered to the computer that does their thinking by sets of wires because a computer small enough to fit inside the robot isn't fast enough or complex enough for the great numbers of decisions that need to be made each second for something like walking. Yet we've come further than many understand in reducing the size of computers. The Palm Pilot I carry on my belt has more computing power than the first Macintosh desktop. The average desktop PC has hundreds or thousands of times more computing power than the computers that took up whole rooms or whole buildings in 1965.
Where will we be in fifty years? I can't even guess. We've come so far in the last ten years that I find it difficult to extrapolate where we'll be in ten more. But I'll say one thing. The problems that Andrew faces in "The Bicentennial Man" may well be reality in fifty years.