Sadly Over-hyped

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I am thinking of the 2016 "Arrival" as I watch this beautifully crafted story in which the military believes it is in charge of the "miraculous"--for the questioning mind of Michael, the laboratory-created being,is sensitive and creative. He processes both literature and experience, and asks questions. During his first venture into the world beyond the laboratory he is sensitive to expectations, and capable of wonder--seeing the toy train and being mesmerized by "the little puffs of smoke". The laboratory has produced something which is in fact a someone, a new person. And, as in "Arrival", the appearance of something not understood elicits two kind of response--the need to control it, and the need to understand it. I recognize that we are stuck with institutionalized fear in our military establishment--and by "we" I mean humans. Still crawling forward out of the primordial ooze. And now I'm going to finish watching the excellent movie which gave rise to this realization.

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.

Forget the campy alien-on-earth cliché treatments. PROTOTYPE delivers the smartest dialogue yet to be seen in SF film, in a contemporary of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN.In a performance that brings smart dialogue and simple but telling cinematography to a deserving SF-savvy audience, Richard Levinson and William Link mark a cerebral triumph in this 1983 TV film starring Christopher Plummer, David Morse and Frances Sternhagen - recently in DVD re-release. With such a well thought-out script, one is left to guess that the film was derived from the theatrical likes of Peter Schaffer or Arthur Miller, but with a tight and wholly spec-fic basis from classic SF matriarch Mary Shelley. In this unabashed homage to that story which began a genre, artificial life is brought to casual life as we know it - a curiosity, a property, a fellow living thing, and finally an entity in search of its purpose, place and destiny.'Michael', the culmination of years of research by a Pentagon-sponsored program to develop a mechanical man, is introduced to us just as creator and mentor Forrester introduces it to an unsuspecting Mrs. Forrester, in an impromptu Turing test weeks ahead of schedule. Afterwards, convinced that the successes in the creature's first experience outside the controlled environment of the lab are a milestone in their careers, Forrester's research team discovers that instead of celebrating, they should now fear the control which the government has been preparing to exert all along. Forthwith, Forrester and his mechanical man go AWOL from the doctor's work, his team, and his own personal life - to see his creation through to its own self-determination.There is no high speed chase scene. There are no gun battles, and no hunchbacked, ghastly half-made man shambling amok about the countryside terrorizing innocents. Only this bright and responsive albeit naive young man who never blinks, drinks, or realizes when he tells a stupefyingly appropriate joke. With this unseemly Pinnochio goes the doctor, a man who finds himself questioning his own intents and purpose as he tries to defend his life's work from those who would 'alter' it - perhaps to turn Michael to military ends, or to tap the knowledge of an artificial mind for more ... human ... purposes. The villain is only the looming threat of misuse of a great thing.The film makes you think. Hard, too, because its social commentary and hypothesis is presented in a most stripped-down and unpretentious format, unencumbered by anything by which it could become dated or trivialized - no high budget special effects or quasi-horrific makeup cloud this film and no glib, idiotic dialogue or cornball voice-over pollutes it. In short, PROTOTYPE is a mind-grower not a mind-blower. Think of PHENOMENON without nonsense, or STARMAN without the glam of superhuman ability. DARYL without any kid stuff.For all it's worth, 'Michael' is human enough that you want to cry at the mistreatment doled out to him for his innocence, but at the same time you are morally lost with Forrester, who is doggedly naive in attempting to save him. In the end the only thing that gives hope is the basis for the title: PROTOTYPE is only the first, and of course there can be more. If the shuttle's Canadian-made robot arm had a thumb, it would be up.

'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.