New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

63 11th Hour, The
47 27 Dresses
29 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
39 Alvin and the Chipmunks
81 Bamako
84 Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
47 Bella
68 Business of Being Born, The
69 Charlie Wilson's War
64 Cloverfield
30 Cover
68 Delirious
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
43 Final Season, The
41 First Sunday
51 Golden Compass, The
49 Good Night, The
65 Great Debaters, The
63 Hannah Takes the Stairs
52 Hollywood Dreams
7 Hottie and the Nottie, The
60 I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
15 In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
81 Juno
70 Lars and the Real Girl
47 Lions for Lambs
41 Mad Money
71 Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
xx Moondance Alexander
53 Music Within
77 Nanking
44 Nina's Heavenly Delights
24 One Missed Call
74 Orphanage, The
30 Over Her Dead Body
39 P.S. I Love You
37 P2
46 Reservation Road
55 Resurrecting the Champ
57 Romulus, My Father
85 Savages, The
78 Starting Out in the Evening
83 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
57 Teeth
92 There Will Be Blood
38 Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
32 Untraceable
63 Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
68 War Dance
71 Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
43 Youth Without Youth

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Bicentennial Man
Buena Vista Pictures


7.0

based on 31 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

Internet Movie Database

MPAA RATING: PG for language and some sexual content

Starring Robin Williams, Sam Neill, Oliver Platt, Embeth Davidtz, and Hallie Kate Eisenberg

Follows the life and times of Andrew (Williams), a robot purchased by the Martin family as a household appliance programmed to perform menial tasks. As Andrew begins to experience emotions and creative thought, the Martins soon discover they don't have an ordinary robot. (Touchstone Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Sci-fi
WRITTEN BY:	Isaac Asimov (short story and novel The Positronic Man) Robert Silverberg (novel The Positronic Man) Nicholas Kazan
DIRECTED BY:	Chris Columbus
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 13, 2000 Video: June 13, 2000 Theatrical: December 17, 1999
RUNNING TIME:	130 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Finally becomes a somber, sentimental and rather profound romantic fantasy that is more true to the spirit of the Golden Age of science-fiction writing than possibly any other movie of the '90s.

Film.com Tom Keogh

Captivating an audience from the get-go and drawing our attention and emotions ever deeper into the layered mysteries of a dreamy fable.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

More a meditation on the nature of life itself than anything else, and a welcome respite from Robin Williams, the emotion sponge.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Few actors apart from Williams could bring it off.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

May wrestle with big ideas, but it does so through a succession of small emotional moments.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

A fragmented, episodic feel and a conclusion that seems both remote and remote-controlled.

Miami Herald Curtis Morgan

Entertains but never quite engages.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A mainstream holiday movie, complete with stupendous special effects, amazing make-up artistry and sumptuous production design.

TNT RoughCut Bill McLochlin

Though Williams gives one of his better performances in recent years -- finding the right combination of humor and restraint for this role -- none of the human characters are fleshed out in any way.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

Reinforcing the chasm between movie magic and wishful thinking.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

The sad fact is Williams is at his best while trapped in Andrew's original sleek form. His performance is subtle, his reactions restrained. The more Robin is exposed, the more ham is served.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Except for Williams, the sitcom-meets-sci-fi acting throughout the movie is strictly of television caliber.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Begins with promise, proceeds in fits and starts, and finally sinks into a cornball drone of greeting-card sentiment.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Has heart, but lacks bite.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

Has a certain slow, mechanical quality.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The once-funny Robin Williams is still stuck in his excruciating touchy-feely mode.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Kids may yawn at the movie's dawdling pace.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Columbus' approach is intended to cloak such topics as mortality and human identity in the warm glow of greeting card sentiment, which renders the prescription palatable for mass consumption but hopelessly diluted.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Director Chris Columbus...seals this comedy in an impenetrable bubble of hollow humanism.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The play for the heartstrings is so cold and calculated that the movie's sentimentality feels as synthetic as its hero, and the philosophy is simpleminded and lazy.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

The childish humor and sensationalistic effects undercut the movie's philosophical agenda.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

I'll be darned if I can think of a more excruciating, ponderous, remarkably unfunny and inert cinemagoing experience to come down the pike in ages.

Mr. Showbiz Cody Clark

This saga of one robot's determined quest to become human is so coldly calculated it could give you frostbite.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

You're likelier to shrink in astonished horror from it than laugh.

LA Weekly Nicole Campos

With this desperately eager-to-please fable based on a short story and novel by Isaac Asimov, director Chris Columbus clinches his berth as the master of shiny-happy message movies.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A cold, protracted and unemotional affair.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

Amid the complacent self-congratulation...is a bizarre reactionary bent.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

It's not really a kids' film, nor it is particularly funny, by either design or execution. It is, rather, Columbus' latest attempt at a comically tinged tearjerker.

Time Richard Corliss

The tone is cloying, the running time bloated.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Must be among the most blatantly manipulative movies ever made. It's cold, calculated and treats its audience like its robotic central character.

Newsweek David Ansen

Kids will be bored, the rest of us baffled.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Keith H. gave it a1:
A boring movie. I was intrigued, when in the beginning they recapped asimov's three laws of robotics, but then they never used them. At the end, one robot even seems to break them. Plodding pace, a weepy score that will put you to sleep and Robin Williams mugging for the camera in almost every scene (not for the first time either) make this a movie to avoid.

[Anonymous] gave it a7:
Flawed, but I liked it. A bit too much Robin Williams in the mix, though. While I, Robot was a good actioner/thriller that interplayed the three laws of robotics, this one looks from a calmer perspective, feeling more like an Asimov short story.

Rachel M gave it a5:
This story approaches classic Sci-Fi ones, introducing the topic "how things would be when...", or better, "how men would be when...", reflecting on vital topics, etc. Asimov's story is great in this sense, but Buena Vista adaptation is focused on commercial success and some special effects. And the result is POOR! The worst in this movie is its construction: time seems to fly, leaving no time for emotion or reflectio. Of course, anything performed by R.Williams is great, but I'm afraid he is too human to perform a robot! I didn't like it.

Hans S gave it a10:
Makes you think how much more fun we could have, how much more we could get out of life if we were more rational and of service to others. Presents the wonders of intelligent systems better than anything to date. I'm sorry to see that most reviewers can't be considered such. As with most things, with emotion, less is more. "The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think." -Horace Walpole.

Gilbert Mulroneycakes Must Die gave it a 3:
Asimov'd spit. The story is great, one of the best Isaac wrote (and he wrote some glorious ones). But poor old Chris "I discovered America!" (points down) "Look, there it is!" "Stop doing that." Columbus turns it from a thought-proving piece of SF into a sappy, sentimental mess. Shame.

Victor gave it an 8:
Original short story / remade novel aside, let's look at the movie itself. Poignant to excess, (e.g. Little Miss' holding Andrew's first expression of creativity in her dying hands), this movie engages the viewer to consider, "What really is humanity?" At its most humorous when Robin Williams' creativity is caged by the robotic form ("Good ... Night"), this movie is certainly not the laugh riot that the studio publicists tout. The underlying message of the movie is that change is unavoidable. The only thing that we can control is how we react to it. Even the character of Andrew, who fights human aging because of his own needs, finally acceeds to the inevitable. There is indeed a natural order of things, and only in acceptance can we find peace. After 200 years, we finally understand.

Jennifer T. gave it a 10:
This is the most amazing movie I have ever seen in my life!! It touches the heart on so many different levels that other movies can't even come close too. It is amazing.

Bicentennial Man Buena Vista Pictures

Bicentennial Man
Buena Vista Pictures