At the center of the movie is an idea from Brian Aldiss' 1969 short story, "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," about an advanced cybernetic pet that is abandoned in the woods. When real household animals are abandoned, there is the sense that humans have broken their compact with them. But when a manufactured pet is thrown away, is that really any different from junking a computer? (I hope Buzz Lightyear is not reading these words.) From a coldly logical point of view, should we think of David, the cute young hero of "A.I.," as more than a very advanced gigapet? Do our human feelings for him make him human? Stanley Kubrick worked on this material for 15 years, before passing it on to Spielberg, who has not solved it, either. It involves man's relationship to those tools that so closely mirror our own desires that we confuse them with flesh and blood; consider that Charles Lindbergh's autobiography We is about himself and an airplane. When we lose a toy, the pain is ours, not the toy's, and by following an abandoned robot boy rather than the parents who threw him away, Spielberg misses the real story.

The film opens with cerebral creepiness, as Professor Hobby (William Hurt) presides at a meeting of a company that makes humanoid robots (or "mechas"). We are in the future; global warming has drowned the world's coastlines, but the American economy has survived, thanks to its exploitation of mechas. "I propose that we build a robot that can love," Hobby says.

Twenty months later, we meet Monica and Henry (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards), a married couple whose own child has been frozen until a cure can be devised for his disease. The husband brings home David (Haley Joel Osment), a mecha who looks as lifelike and lovable as--well, Haley Joel Osment.

"There's no substitute for your own child!" sobs Monica, and Henry tries to placate her: "I'll take him back." Cold, but realistic, David is only a product. Yet he has an advanced chip that allows him to learn, adapt and "love," when Monica permanently "imprints" him. In some of the film's most intriguing passages, Spielberg explores the paradoxes that result, as David wins their love and yet is never--quite--a real boy. He doesn't sleep, but he observes bedtime. He doesn't eat, but so fervent is his desire to belong that he damages his wiring by ingesting spinach (wouldn't a mecha be programmed not to put things into its mouth?). David is treated with cruelty by other kids; humans are frequently violent and resentful against mechas. Why? Maybe for the same reason that we swear at computers.