Bicentennial Man

Sci-Fi, Drama, Romance

Robin Williams	Andrew Martin
Embeth Davidtz	Little Miss Amanda Martin/Portia Charney
Sam Neill	'Sir' Richard Martin
Oliver Platt	Rupert Burns
Kiersten Warren	Galatea
Wendy Crewson	'Ma´am' Martin
Hallie Kate Eisenberg	7 Year Old 'Little Miss' Amanda Martin
Lindze Letherman	9 Year Old 'Miss' Grace Martin
Angela Landis	'Miss' Grace Martin
John Michael Higgins	Bill Feingold, Martin's Lawyer
Stephen Root	Dennis Mansky
Lynne Thigpen	Female President
Bradley Whitford	Lloyd

Director	Chris Columbus
Producer	Michael Barnathan; Chris Columbus
Writer	Isaac Asimov; Nicholas Kazan

Bicentennial Man was 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 Liar and Patch 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, the Home Alone director 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