The Android Affair (1995)

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Harley Jane Kozak plays a young surgeon named "Karen Garrett" who is improving her skills by practicing on androids. Her boss, "Dr. Winston" (Ossie Davis) tells her that in order to become a better surgeon she needs to be able to improve her personal relationships with her patients. So, when she is given a difficult heart procedure to perform on a certain android named "William" (Griffin Dunne), she agrees to take him out of the laboratory to see the outside world. When she does things begin to get complicated. Anyway, rather than spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it I won't divulge the rest of the story. I would, however, like to go over some of the good and bad things in this film. First, I didn't care for Griffin Dunne's role as he was simply too juvenile in a number of scenes. Likewise, Saul Rubinek (as the android "Fiedler") looked completely ridiculous with his long hair constantly getting in the way. In many ways he reminded me of the musician, "Tiny Tim" who used to sing on the show "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In". Since I could never take Tiny Tim seriously it was very difficult to take Saul Rubinek's performance seriously either. But that's probably just me. Along those same lines, I thought Natalie Radford (as "Rachel Tyler") appeared to just be going through the motions and was totally dull and uninspired. That said, about the only good thing about this movie was the performance of Harley Jane Kozak who managed to breathe a little life into this rather lifeless film. Unfortunately, it just wasn't enough.

Fiesty and uptight surgeon Dr. Karen Garrett (a fine performance by Harley Jane Kozak) has to perform heart surgery on charming and jocular android William (an excellent and engaging portrayal by Griffin Dunne). William demands that he be taken out of the medical institute he's spent his whole life in. While in the outside world William and Karen go on the lam and wind up falling in love. Writer/director Richard Kletter mixes elements of the comedy, romance, and thriller genres into a pleasing and entertaining whole. Kozak and Dunne make for appealing leads; their nice natural chemistry makes the central romance both funny and touching in equal measure. Moreover, there are sturdy supporting contributions from Ossie Davis as stern, pragmatic, and demanding medical institute head Dr. Winston, Saul Rubinek as flaky robotics expert Fiedler, Peter Outerbridge as affable renegade android Tomas Benti, Natalie Radford as scrappy punkette Rachel Taylor, Chandra Galasso as tough tracker Alexx, and David Campbell as Alexx's lunkheaded partner Gunther. The story has a few neat twists and turns as well as a certain warm and pleasant quality to it. In addition, we even get a provocative main message about how all living beings yearn to be free and in charge of their own lives. Both Bernard Salzmann's slick cinematography and Simon Boswell's varied score are up to speed. A sweet little flick.

Based on Issac Assimov's science fiction tale, The Android Affair is the story of a state-of-the-art medical teaching facility where surgeons learn to perfect their craft by practicing on androids. One surgeon is assigned to an android (Griffin Dunne) with a heart problem. But the android, more interested in the world beyond the testing facility, convinces the surgeon to help him escape so that, at least for a day, he can see the world outside.So it kind of starts out like the typical story of the Android who wants to explore human feelings and emotions, and exhibits at least some capability of doing so. But the remainder of the movie is a fairly ridiculous cat-and-mouse thriller where the head of the medical school (Ossie Davis)sends his goons to track down the surgeon and android when he learns of their escape. As the surgeon will soon learn, the android is much more than just a life-like robot with a heart problem. The second half of the movie, where the bulk of the action occurs, becomes fairly ridiculous mostly because the action feels pretty unbelievable and the dialog gets fairly sappy. But for a cheap, c-grade science fiction production, it isn't the worst thing that's ever been made.

The possibility of intimate relations between android and human has been referred to in several motion pictures, notably BLADERUNNER, directed by Ridley Scott, and that is the subject of this poorly composed work, produced for cable television, written by its director Richard Kletter and science fiction author Isaac Asimov, from a short film of Kletter's: "Teach 109". At the Institute For Surgical Research androids are subjects for empirical surgery, as the robotic creatures, formulated with the precise likeness of man but without a soul or an ability to feel pain, are able to express their exact internal physical condition throughout invasive procedures. Harley Jane Kozak portrays Dr. Karen Garrett, a newly fledged surgeon who has been selected by the head of the Institute to perfect a method for correcting a particularly severe cardiac condition, exploiting androids as experimentees. The individual chosen for her surgical task is of an advanced design of replicant played by Griffin Dunne, called Teach, and a burgeoning relationship between it and the doctor occupies the remainder of the romantic comedy. Teach has unexplainedly an eloquently endowed and rebellious personality and the script describes how, when attempting to maintain control of her wayward medical subject, Karen falls in love with it. Upon its persistent request, she smuggles Teach out from the Institute to enable it to learn of the real world and to interrelate with humans, and the film's problems become overwhelming at that point. A most obvious difficulty is in acceptance of Karen's abrupt metamorphosis from a dedicated and ambitious surgeon into a rather giddy and love-struck amorosa of an artificial being. Dunne and Kozak are noted for performing in roles emphasizing their talents for the expression of wry humour; Dunne responds well to strong direction (not available here) whereas Kozak has too limited an acting range to do much with this thinly written piece. A highly episodic scenario offers copious holes: the "outside world" into which the oddly matched lovers escape in this story set in the future has a remarkable similarity to contemporary Toronto, the streets of which are cleansed of human life whenever the storyline requires gunfire or other excessive activity; the casting is quaint with seemingly significant characters vanishing from the plot; there is precious little character development in lieu of inclusion of "twists" that don't and plot surprises that employ a telegraph; poor Kozak is given perhaps the most ludicrous line when she avows to the android: "You are the love of my life" - not edited properly, so that we are privy to the beginning of her afterlaugh - typical of this slipslop production.