Prototype

This is one of the best pieces of television SF ever created.

It's uncommonly well acted, well directed and well written and often moving, especially the ending.

Best guess is that the majority of viewers thought they were going to get an action piece filled with explosions and mayhem instead of a rare bird: a piece of television drama that explores what it means to be human through the eyes of an android.

David Morse is exceptional as is Christopher Plummer as his chief creator.

How this movie rates a 5.7 on the IMDB scale is beyond me.

One supposes the level of intelligence required to enjoy such a piece is higher than the average drone.

But I was quickly reassured. From the moment Christopher Plummer shows himself to be a genuinely irascible old man and not your typical 'hero', and David Morse as the android, in his elongated pants and wide-open baby-face, made their first appearances, I was held. With its' plot -- professor wants to keep his invention out of the hands of the military -- this is nothing new in the plot department but it is written with care, and the cast (including the wonderful Frances Steenhagen as Plummers' feisty wife) and a good director, David Greene, make the most of it. The ending is a stunner, both clever and touching. On my list as one of those films I was expecting nothing of and was delightfully surprised.

That Terminator-like metal skull with the pointy teeth and glowing red eye has absolutely nothing to do with this movie. That was obviously just some ad executive's attempt to play on the popularity of "Ahnold's" film successes. Ditto for the tag line "The future is not friendly." Instead, "Prototype" is a thoughtful, well played drama about two character's struggles to understand and deal with the world around them. Christopher Plummer is on solid ground as the scientist who wants his creation to have a chance at life, and David Morse is spectacularly understated as the android prototype of the title.

What makes this so compelling is the same thing that makes all of the best science fiction or fantasy work: The principle players take the situation and their part in it as real, without engaging in histrionics. As Michael, Morse indulges in neither the overplayed "childlike wonder" nor the hyper-mechanical stiffness so often poured into similar roles by lesser actors. Michael is "other" without being weird.

Well worth a look.

'THE FUTURE IS NOT FRIENDLY' intones the cover. While this may or may not be true, the movie is set in 1983. I suppose that being suckered into buying this bargain DVD at Wal-Mart in 2005 is the unfriendly future they were referring to.

The cover art is a lie. There are no skeletal Terminator-style robots with red eyeballs in this movie. The android guy wears a white turtleneck and is less threatening than Star Trek's Data, and he doesn't do anything interesting. He's a wuss. This movie is crap.

If you are responsible for the marketing of this DVD, you should be ashamed of yourself.

I, too, bought this movie out of some bargain bin and it lay around our house for quite some time before my wife and I watched it. We were, in a word, quite surprised and pleased to encounter a science fiction movie about an intelligent robot that for once did not rely on special effects to make its point.

"Prototype" is a thoughtful look, not only at the emotions of a man who has dedicated more or less his whole career to creating a human-like robot , but also at the thought processes of such a creature as it actually goes into the world and has to react with real people and situations. The story builds to an inevitable climax very smoothly.

The cast is quite good and the production values, such as they are (the budget was obviously rather low), do not detract at all from the story. In fact, a great deal of the story takes place out of doors or in real buildings, giving the whole film a touch of reality.

A great deal has been left unexplained, such as the building of the robot, which has already been accomplished as the story begins. One also wonders what powers the robot. The viewer must simply pass over that and concentrate on the existential dilemma of the robot and its creator.

I definitely recommend this movie. It is a pleasant change of pace from the current spate of SF films that depend so much on spectacular visual effects. "Prototype" is definitely an example of the thinking man's science fiction. Just the kind of story that John Campbell would have published in the old Astounding Science Fiction magazine. (Just to make sure that there is no misunderstanding, that is a compliment, considering how much of the maturity of modern science fiction resulted from Campbell's wise editorship of that great magazine.)