The seemingly unlikely friendship of the warmly humanistic Steven Spielberg and cool, clinical Stanley Kubrick has resulted in one of the summer's most fascinating movies. . Artificial Intelligence, based on Brian Aldiss' short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," is a project first developed by Kubrick in the 1980s; the film legend subsequently planned on producing the picture, with Spielberg as director. After Kubrick's untimely death in 1999, Spielberg agreed to move forward with the property, taking his first screenplay credit since Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977.

　　 Kubrick had decided that . was closer to Spielberg's sensibility than his own and, indeed, the movie often feels like a companion piece to Spielberg's early sci-fi blockbusters, Close Encounters and . The Extraterrestrial. But there's also a bleak side to . that Spielberg's followers may find unsettling--ultimately, the movie doesn't offer much hope for the future of the human race, although that Kubrick-style pessimism is mingled with a Spielbergian streak of innocence. This collision of sensibilities may leave some viewers perplexed and frustrated, but the movie remains an ambitious and provocative conversation piece.

　　 . is set in the near future, after the polar ice caps have melted and flooded coastal cities like New York. Highly sophisticated, human-like robots (or "mechas") have been developed to perform various tasks for the much-reduced human population, and now the brilliant Professor Hobby (William Hurt) of Cybertronics Labs has perfected a prototype of a robot boy designed to fill an emotional void for childless couples. A Cybertronics employee, Henry Swinton (Sam Robards), and his wife Monica (Frances O'Connor), whose terminally ill child has been cryogenically frozen, take in the eerily realistic artificial boy, David (Haley Joel Osment), on a trial basis. At first spooked by the ever-smiling robot,英文影评 Monica is eventually won over and initiates the process of "imprinting" the boy with an emotional bond. (It's like flicking an "on" switch for love.) The family draws closer until an unexpected miracle occurs: The Swintons' real son Martin (Jake Thomas) is cured and returns home. The bratty Martin exploits his cyber-rival's innocence and lures him into trouble, to the point where Monica is convinced David poses a threat to the family's well being. Monica abandons David in a forest, and the film--which up to now has been a rather hermetic domestic tale--suddenly expands out to the nightmarish larger world. David, who has been schooled (thanks to a scheming Martin) in the story of Pinocchio, sets out to find the Blue Fairy who can turn him into a real boy and help him win back his mother's love. But first, David must elude the cyber-phobic poachers who are rounding up "mechas" and destroying them for sport at an arena event called Flesh Fair.

　　 The Flesh Fair sequence is but the first of several spectacular episodes in David's odyssey, which also include a visit to a garish, Blade Runner-like urban destination called Rouge City and a journey over the submerged New York. Accompanying David is Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a strutting "lover robot" who becomes his new protector. Ultimately, David finds his Blue Fairy, but the film takes a radical turn that manages to be simultaneously gloomy and unashamedly emotional.

　　 Your response to . will largely depend on your reaction to the whole conceit of a mechanical boy protagonist. If David is "programmed" to love, one might ask, why should we care about the fate of this artificial creature? But if you can accept that the character's fixation on his mother's acceptance is taking him beyond himself, creating something spiritual out of his fabricated being, David's odyssey will haunt you. The metaphors for human notions of identity and soul are all there for the pondering in this unusually philosophical studio blockbuster.

　　 Osment again proves himself a remarkably self-possessed and skilled young actor, and Law is a high-wattage delight in his witty, cunning, charismatic turn as Gigolo Joe. O'Connor (Mansfield Park) is also terrific in the difficult role of David's emotionally conflicted mother figure. The movie finds Spielberg at the peak of his considerable craft, delivering both delicately intimate moments and inventive visions of a chaotic future, with astonishing work by production designer Rick Carter (Jurassic Park), visual-effects supervisors Dennis Muren and Scott Farrar, and animatronics master Stan Winston.

　　 Kubrick devotees may never accept the designated torch-bearer here, but Spielberg, like his young hero, reaches beyond himself with this dark but transcendent exploration of the fate of the human spirit.