Pub: Warner Brothers S021330. 140 minutes. Price: £10.99 (UK) - may vary so shop around. Stars: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Brendan Gleeson and William Hurt.

Check out website: www.warnerbros.co.uk and www.AI-Artificialintelligence.co.uk First, a confession. I have yet to read Brian Aldiss' original short story, 'Super Toys Last All Summer Long', this film was based on but as interviews have indicated that original producer, the late Stanley Kubrick, and current director,

Steven Spielberg, have moved it away from it's source material, this film can be treated as an entity all to itself.
The reality is set in the near-future where androids or 'mechas' are advancing in development all the time and yesterday's models are chucked out when damaged as the latest models replace them.

One of the corporations creates a boy robot, David (actor Haley Osment), who is capable of giving love to foster parents, the Swintons, who's real son had to be put in suspended animation because of a terminal illness and wanted a substitute.

Everything goes fine until a cure for their real son is discovered and he's re-introduced to the family. From there onwards, things begin to turn ugly as David becomes a victim of sibling rivalry and affection for the parents.

Ultimately, after David nearly drowns the real son, it is the mother who drives him and his robotic 'Teddy' far away and leaves him to find his own fate rather than see his dissembled by the corporation.

David is convinced that his 'mother' would prefer to have him become a real boy - having read Pinocchio - and is determined to find the Blue Fairy who will perform the magic on him. [Make a point of rule, never to let androids read or mis-interpret the wrong books!]

Gigolo Joe (actor Jude Law) meanwhile out to, er, service one of his female patrons discovers her dead and realising that he's about to be blamed for it, removes his identification label and goes on the run. Both Joe and David are part of a group of damaged androids and robots that are picked up as part of a destruction mecha derby.

This is probably the cruellest aspect of the film where various mechas are shot from cannons or melted in acid for the pleasure of a screaming audience's enjoyment. Obviously, not everyone appreciates having mechas around.

However, it is the sight of David, held by Joe, about to be bathed in acid pleading for his life that turns the crowd against the boss of the show. In the confusion, David, Joe and Teddy escape and head for a town where the gigolo thinks they can find protection.

To go further is going to give the entire plot away. Suffice to say that Spielberg knows what emotional strings to pull and turns the story into a real weepy at the end. How much of the emotional input was in the work that Kubrick through screenwriter Ian Watson left after his death for Spielberg is hard to say.

Certainly, if ever there's a book on the film available, it will certainly be worth checking out just for the behind scenes of the special effects, which were a joy to watch. The fact that it was held together with a strong story didn't hurt it much at all.

I've read some of the comparisons of the 'Pinocchio' theme to Spielberg's earlier film, 'Close Encounters Of The Third Kind' but there it was only a motif. It's only really come together in this film. Whether an android or mecha would really want to be human is something we'd have to see should our technology ever become so advanced as depicted here.

It's an old SF theme. Certainly the end sequence suggests that androids will be the only thing left of our culture in the distant future. I suppose it depends on how much a walking computer - which is essentially all a robot or android really is - would like to be like his makers.

Considering that they are superior in so many ways to weak flesh, this reviewer is surprised that such an option would occur. No doubt some other scriptwriter or director will want to explore the alternative some time.

In the meantime, go out and enjoy this movie for what it is. It's worth watching.

GF Willmetts