LOS ANGELES -- Testing the intellects of moviegoers, four new movies opened nationally on Friday -- ranging from Steven Spielberg's long-awaited robot drama A.I. Artificial Intelligence (hard) to comedy Pootie Tang (real easy).
Tucked in between are director John Singleton's return to south central Los Angeles for drama Baby Boy and teen romance crazy/beautiful, starring the currently red-hot 19-year-old Hollywood starlet, Kirsten Dunst.
Science fiction tale A.I. is the most brainy of the four with its futuristic tale of a robot boy (Haley Joel Osment), who is created specifically to love other people but who is coldly tossed out of his home by his human mother.
Reviews and moviegoers fresh from preview screenings in Los Angeles have been offering either a "love it," "hate it" or "can't quite figure it out" view of the film that Spielberg took on following the death of legendary director Stanley Kubrick.
Kubrick, whose movies include "2001: A Space Odyssey," "A Clockwork Orange" and the more recent "Eyes Wide Shut," began developing "A.I." back in 1983, but just before his death asked his friend Spielberg to take over the direction.
What audiences get in "A.I.," then, is a blending of Kubrick's notoriously cold view of humanity with Spielberg's often sentimental take on storytelling.
Daily Variety critic Todd McCarthy praised the movie, calling it a "deeply thoughtful and thoroughly fascinating film," while New Yorker magazine critic David Denby said the movie leaves audiences "with nothing but an Oedipal robot" and the Wall Street Journal declared: "'A.I.' has loving robots but no heart of its own."
Sam Robards and Frances O'Connor portray a married couple far into the future whose son is terminally ill and has been frozen cryogenically until his disease can be cured.
To replace him, they adopt the first robotic child, David, who was built to love unconditionally. But when their own human son recovers, the mother abandons David deep in the woods.
To return to his mom, whom he still loves, David has to navigate through a world populated by "mechas" (mechanicals) and "orgas" (organics) with a companion "mecha" named Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) who has been programmed to be a sort of sex robot.
Like many Spielberg films, "A.I." is filled with special effects and imagined worlds, and it is certain to be one of this summer movie season's most talked about.
Likewise, "Baby Boy" also looks to cause a stir with a theme that centers on how young black men from inner city neighborhoods and single-parent families fail to grow up and take responsibility for themselves and their offspring.
"I've had this story on my mind ever since 'Boyz N the Hood,"' Singleton told Reuters, referencing his breakthrough 1991 film about young kids growing up in south Los Angeles.
He said what intrigued him was exploring the dynamic relationship between a single mom and her grown boy when a new boyfriend enters her life, but what audiences really get is a glimpse of one young man's struggle -- with himself and with societal forces -- to grow into adulthood.
Jody (Tyrese Gibson) is a 20-year-old man who has fathered children with two different woman. He's out of work and living with his 36-year-old mom, Juanita (A.J. Johnson) when she strikes up a romance with a one-time gangster Melvin (Ving Rhames) whose gone straight and formed his own business.
A new man in the house complicates Jody's life, but he can't sleep over at his girlfriend's apartment because she, too, has a new man (Snoop Dog) on her couch.
Throughout the film, audiences see Jody tackle love, career and escaping a life of crime before he finally becoming a man. While it deals with a young African American man, all guys, regardless of race, can learn a few things from "Baby Boy."
Descending the intellectual scale, moviegoers reach "crazy/beautiful" with Dunst playing a rich girl with a tendency for fast-living who falls in love for a straight-laced high school jock who grew up on the poor side of town.
As in so many teen romances dating back to Romeo and Juliet, family and societal tensions threaten to tear apart their new relationship. Will love win the day? Probably so. This ain't no Shakespeare. It's a Hollywood movie.
Lastly, in the category of "don't-think-too-much" comes "Pootie Tang," based on the international crime fighting singing star character whom comedian Lance Crouther popularized on HBO's "The Chris Rock Show."
In the movie, the super cool, smooth-talking (he has is own, sort of, language called Pootie-Speak) ladies man must overcome drug kingpin Dirty Dee and corporate titan Dick Lecter as they try to smear the reputation of poor Pootie.
