I thought Bicentennial Man was okay, but it did not live up to
my expectations. I keep hoping for a sreious sci-fi movie (like
Contact) to be a milestone (like 2001) but they never seem to
reach that level.
The movie did stay close enough to Asimov's story that I could
recognize the quality in it. And everyone involved gave adequate
performances.
I was disappointed in the production style, though. Asimov's
story took place in the robot-filled world he used for dozens of
his novels and short stories. Having read some of them over the
years, I was hoping to get a look at the world he described.
Instead Bicentenial Man concentrated all its energies on its own
plot and simply gave us a standard science fiction backdrop.
For example, a critical part of the original story was the sub-human
way some characters treated Andrew Martin. In Asimov's story this
was a part of their culture, since all the characters grew up
surrounded by robots. We got to see the effect from Andrew's
point of view, but we did not get to see the culture that caused
it.
We heard about other families owning other robots, and we
occasionall saw another robot, but we hardly saw the way the
general public acted around any robot except Andrew.
I saw Bicentennial Man with my wife. Having read the story I
understood the attitude of Andrew's various antagonists, but my
wife did not. To her they were the same shallow bad guys like you
might find in any romantic comedy. She thought the movie was
boring.
Instead of creating a rich setting that would explore the
culture so critical to the story, they gave us flying cars,
holographic movie projections, and a Big Meeting Room for the
world government. All boring sci-fi staples. Yawn.
Another place where Bicentennial Man failed was the way it
treated Andrew's celebrity status as he got older. In the story
he was world famous, but in the movie this was hardly mentioned.
To me this actually changed the meaning of the story a little bit.
