A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Undoubtedly one of the most eagerly anticipated collaborations of all time, the collision of one of cinema's most provocative minds and perhaps its most successful practitioner, A.I. is science fiction no more, film fact at last. A labour of love for the late Kubrick since the days of 2001 and maladjusted supercomputer HAL, posthumously realised by Spielberg, the warped offspring of E.T. and 2001, A.I. is a fascinating - but flawed - document of clashing ideas.

Set in a future earth of rising sea-levels, spiralling populations and dwindling resources in which robots have become a practical necessity, A.I. centres on David (Haley Joel Osment), the first "mecha" engineered to emulate human love, and the couple selected to adopt him in place of their comatose son Martin. The opening third is a masterpiece of atmospheric future-noir filmmaking; David copying the actions of eating, sleeping and playing, appearing silently from behind doors, glimpsed repeatedly in refraction, through glass, behind steel worktops, a mechanical cuckoo in the mother's nest. Once David's love circuits are irreversibly hardwired, however, and following Martin's return from hospital, Spielberg clashes David's new-found need for love against the vagaries of human emotion; Martin's sibling jealousy and childish cruelty, Henry's parental paranoia, Monica's divided maternal loyalties. The philosophical overtones are profound - Where does love come from? What does it mean to love and be loved? And to be real? Rather than submit David for destruction, Monica abandons him in the woods, accompanied only by the Jiminy Cricket figure of a robotic Teddy, and later of sex-mecha Gigolo Joe (Jude Law). Is this Monica's assertion of love, or betrayal? Human love proves untrustworthy, while David's hardwired (mechanical?) love endures. Which, then, is the more real?

These questions resonate powerfully throughout A.I. and David's quest to become a real boy. Hypnotically played by Osment, David becomes an intriguing twist on the archetypal Spielberg child protagonist, the innocent adrift in a dangerous world, while Spielberg's vision of the future is surprisingly and sometimes disturbingly downbeat: from the mecha-mashing Flesh Fairs to the neon-drenched depravity of Rouge City, David's journey repeatedly exposes human exploitation of robots to satisfy their emotional, physical and psychological failings. "They hate us, you know," Joe tells David at one point, the human ability to love, of course, also implying the capacity to hate; the desire to live also the inevitability of dying, ironic given David's determined desire to become human. Kubrick's sleek visuals and chill detachment would undoubtedly have mined these rich philosophical seams more deeply, but Spielberg trusts instead on emotive direction and the pure power of spectacle to make his points. It's an optical treat throughout, employing evocative use of light and colour and Rick Carter's stunning production design (spot the Kubrick references) to full effect. The CGI - androids whose faces split open to reveal internal machines, part-scavenging revenant robots, drowned Manhattan landscapes - is simply dazzling.

A.I. bears many of Kubrick's hallmarks: the fascination with psychological conflict and emotional programming, the collision of organic and mechanic worlds, the bleak view of human nature, the obsession with humanity's self-created cages. But Kubrick envisioned A.I. as a different kind of sci-fi epic, an existential allegory of a robot Pinocchio desperate to become real; and this, of course, is where Spielberg comes into his own. Make no mistake, Kubrickolytes, this is a Spielberg film through and through - written and directed by him, A.I. becomes a technological fairy-tale told from a child's-eye view, imaginative, engrossing, but never as truly dark or challenging as the material demands. Despite some over-obvious touches (think what a cold, clinical Kubrick Flesh Fair might have been like), and an over-reliance on the fairy-tale framework, this nevertheless remains a dizzying display of imaginative filmmaking and is unquestionably Spielberg's most experimental work to date. The conclusion, as David faces up to his own existential Gepetto, Cybertronics scientist Prof. Hobby (Hurt), surrounded by half-finished, hollowed-out versions of himself, is deeply moving; and his ultimate rejection of his "real" identity in favour of a fairy-tale escape leaves the film's mystical questions of reality, artificiality and identity suitably unanswered.

Inexplicably Spielberg doesn't leave it there, tacking on an obvious, over-explicative, and (despite what you may have read) depressingly conventional happy ending that seems wholly out of step with the preceding film. Attempting to tie up both David's story and the implications of an artificial intelligence which has, as Joe predicted, outlasted its human makers (they're robots, not aliens, apparently), it's an ending which makes the film's title seem appropriate for entirely the wrong reasons.

Quite rightly a different film to the one Kubrick would have made, emotive, entertaining, and, despite its failings, superbly made, A.I. is proof that Spielberg is still light years ahead. But you can't help wondering what might have been.

Reviewed by Oliver Berry