Based on Brian Aldiss' short story "Super Toys Last All Summer Long" and adapted from an original script by the late Stanley Kubrick – “AI” had all the trappings of a first-rate science fiction film.

According to the press release - Steven Spielberg's film takes place sometime in the near future. Humans have created servants - robots are used for a variety of everyday functions. And since children are in short supply – building a robot that can love becomes a crusade for one corporation. So they do.

Then the story focuses on a prototype boy robot, named David, who begins a journey toward becoming human. Didn’t we see this in “Bicentennial Man?”

“AI” is a long-winded film, which takes its time to come to the point – any point. Audiences will feel every minute of “AI’s” two hour and twenty minute running time.

Haley Joel Osment delivers a charming performance as the robot wanting to be real so he can be loved. But Osment can’t ingratiate his way out of the paradox the film creates. Ironically - the story itself causes the problem. We are told in almost every frame of the film that David is not real.

What David is, is a victim who never overcomes his role as victim.

In the story of Pinocchio, which runs rampantly through “AI,” the wooden puppet believed himself to be real in his heart. Pinocchio had the faith to follow the path and ultimately find his true self. It was faith, not the Blue Fairy that ultimately transforms him.

David is driven only by the need to be loved, which touches audiences on a very instinctive level. But it is also a manipulative device as we see him all alone out there in the big bad world of the future. We simply feel sorry for the character. And by the film’s end we are tired of feeling sorry for him.

There have been other “artificially intelligent” creations we, as moviegoers, have never felt sorry for. There is more humanity found in R2D2 and C3PO. Not because C3PO and R2 were treated as “real” by others. But because the pair themselves believed they were real. And, despite 3PO’s constant complaining the two “droids” were never hapless victims as David is.

I’m sorry to go against the masses but I found “AI” mostly artificial with little intelligence.

It’s rated PG-13 for violent images and sexual content.