A family purchases a state-of-the-art robot named Andrew (Robin Williams) to do housework. When the family realizes that the robot is doing creative, out of the ordinary things, they encourage it in its work. As the years pass, Andrew acquires more human personality traits and decides to seek out to become more human. He then takes a multiple year journey to find others like him. Soon, his mission turns into a 200 year adventure filled with hardships and love as he tries to be accepted as a human being.

The more I ponder Robin Williams' latest film, the more I realize I have a love/hate relationship with it. It's a great theatrical piece, but tainted in more ways than one. The morals within it, I'd say, are a bit messed up.

With a good plot, good acting, and good characters, Bicentennial Man is entertaining to say the least. But I, once again, must get atop my Hollywood soap box and complain about certain aspects about this movie. First off, the language. This is a PG-rated movie and in one scene, Rupert, the character who gives Andrew human "upgrades," teaches Andrew to say the "S" word, as opposed to other harmless words. The word is repeated several times and then Andrew later uses it in the film. It's just dumb, because it encourages swearing. And of course kids who see the movie will probably think it's funny and without knowing better, repeat the word.

God is pretty much left out of the equation in the movie, too, with the exception of the occasional appearances of a church (mainly for weddings, so it's no big deal). But the mere fact that the robot wants to be human, and other humans try to help him, is like playing God, which one cannot do. It's a silly scenario, and it makes me mad how no one in the movie questioned that. The nitty gritty is that he will forever remain a robot because he has no God-given soul. It's a point which the movie overlooked and implied a couple times that Andrew indeed had a soul, which obviously makes no sense.

Also, in Andrew's quest for humanity, he gets male reproductive organs and it's implied in many ways that he has premarital sex with a female human being. For this to be PG, it's assumed that it is a movie you can take your kids to, but, unfortunately, Bicentennial Man is not that kind of movie. From language, to sex talk, to implied sexual relations, this is a movie to leave the kids home for. Despite it's PG rating, Bicentennial Man is a movie for adults. (Small minor note: there is a fat ugly spider in it for those of you spider-haters like me. It's not as bad as a tarantula, but they do briefly show Andrew finding the ugly pest and taking it outside to set it free on a flower bed. If he was really smart, he should have killed it... ;) )

The redeeming qualities of the film are the emphasis on family, the special effects (for the futuristic scenes that remind me of Back to the Future II), and the characters. The film does have its funny moments. And for a Christian, it does make you think, but the above faults still ring true. The 2.5 star rating is mainly given for the film's production values, with all else considered, and it would have warranted a higher rating if it weren't for its more mature content.