Wearing its Kubrickian influence on its sleeve, Spielberg’s film is an
uneasy blend of his visual storytelling flair and the cold, icy tone
indicative of later Kubrick, giving the film a detachment
unprecendented in Spielberg’s work. Haley Joel Osment gives a
performance as robo-Pinocchio David of preternatural skill in a child
actor: he is the anchor of the film. The other actors are all very good,
but necessarily sidelined as we follow David’s quest to become a real
boy. AI is a strange beast: a multi-million dollar art film, with all the
ambiguity and polarised reaction that implies. Challenging,
stimulating, but strangely unrewarding.
