Grade: B+

Verdict: A fascinating struggle between the intelligent and the artificial, and between two very different filmmakers' styles.

Details: Starring Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law and Frances O'Connor. Written and directed by Steven Spielberg. Rated PG-13 for sexual content and violent images. Two hours, 24 minutes.

Review: Monica (Frances O'Connor) has a hard time loving her son. You can't really blame her. Like a puppy, he's constantly underfoot. His smile is overly bright, and he laughs too loudly, too long. Plus, he doesn't have a pulse.

You see, David (Haley Joel Osment) is an android, a gift to Monica from her husband Henry (Sam Robards) to distract her from her grief over their real son, seriously ill in the hospital.

Though David is just “a hundred miles of fiber” on the inside, he's the latest model designed by Professor Hobby (William Hurt), who introduces a philosophical quandary into the mix of microchips and lifelike skin. David has the ability to feel love; he's the prototype for a new line of robot boys. But as one of Hobby's colleagues asks him pointedly, “Can you get a human to love them back?”

That's the setup of “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.” A feature-length struggle between the intelligent and the artificial, it's the most fascinating — and sometimes most frustrating — movie to appear this year.

Developed by the cerebral, chilly director Stanley Kubrick, and taken over after his death by sunny, sentimental Steven Spielberg, the film represents a struggle between the pair's filmmaking styles. Neither director trumps the other; Kubrick's cool precision brings depth to Spielberg, while Spielberg keeps those depths from getting too dark. The result is something of a draw.

Based on a story by Brian Aldiss, “A.I.” has the simple lines of a modern fable, pumped up with familiar elements from an old one. It's “Pinocchio” for the digital age, set in a future where coastal cities have been flooded by melting polar ice caps, and the widespread production of “mechas” (robots) has created a backlash among the “orgas” (people).

The film's first hour shows Spielberg resisting his impulse toward schmaltz. Basically confined to David's new home, the sequence dramatizes the uneasy bonding between the robot boy and Monica. It plays like an extended “Twilight Zone” episode, combining the domestic details of “E.T.” and the sleeker, cooler tones of Kubrick's “Eyes Wide Shut.”

Following an emotionally wrenching scene between Osment and O'Connor, the movie begins the second of its three chapters. Believing the story of “Pinocchio” is true, David sets off in search of the Blue Fairy to transform him into a real boy, so that his “mother” will love him. It's basically the Pleasure-Island-and-peril section of Carlo Collodi's book, and the Lampwick stand-in is Gigolo Joe (Jude Law).

He's a licensed pleasure machine who assures his female clients, “Once you've had a robot lover, you'll never want a real man again.” Literally slick, with a creepily smooth face amd pompadour, he moves with catlike grace and a song-and-dance man's finesse. Law took dance lessons for the role, and he's absolutely terrific. (He makes you wonder what “Moulin Rouge” might have been starring him, and directed by someone less contemptuous of the audience than Baz Luhrmann.)

Joe and David go on the lam and the tranquil homelife of the first hour revs into a garish nightscape. We enter a forest full of punkish human robot hunters on motorcycles, and damaged and discarded androids who first appear like the stars of a mechanical “Night of the Living Dead.”

This phantasmagoric section includes a visit to a metal-rock arena called a Flesh Fair, where humans celebrate their humanity by torturing and destroying rogue androids. (The sequence seems to feature a brief vocal cameo by Chris Rock, a distraction.) Finally, we go to “Rouge City,” a sex-and-entertainment mecca that could give you flashbacks to “A Clockwork Orange.” That's because the designs — with buildings shaped like women's body parts — are based on ones Kubrick himself had developed.

If you were to leave the movie at the two-hour mark, it's possible to think you've seen the bleak ending the late filmmaker would have preferred. But then comes the final chapter, a narrative gamble that doesn't completely pay off (the less you know about it, the better). Here you can feel Spielberg's impulse to neatly package our feelings, to detonate our emotions. And yes, while he does come up with a conclusion that's sentimental, to his credit it's also very troubling.

A marvel of technical design and ominous tone, bolstered by John Williams' skittishly moody piano score, “A.I.” is always engrossing. But it never fully comes to grips with its central subject, the ethical and emotional question of the responsibility men have toward the machines they make.

“They made us too smart, too quick and too many,” Joe says to sum up humanity's growing suspicion of androids. It's a plausible but overly simple explanation. As it unreels, the movie becomes more of a sci-fi picaresque than the ethical meditation it at first pretends to be. The search for the Blue Fairy becomes almost a snipe hunt, diverting us from the core theme. Kubrick first touched on the man-machine issue in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Its malfunctioning computer HAL had more personality than any of the humans onscreen, which is also true here.

A few plot points in “A.I.” feel a little shaky; Spielberg probably should have hired a second writer to finesse the script, the first solely credited to the director since “E.T.” And the computer-generated effects, extremely effective most of the time, are their weakest in the final segment.

But you know what? “A.I.” is still the best thing you'll find at the multiplex. It's especially ambitious for a mainstream, summertime film.

Osment continues his run of impressive performances; yes, he was good in “Pay It Forward,” even if the rest of the movie was dreck. At first his David is spooky in its/his precision. He's a Stepford Doll, staring at O'Connor as she drinks her coffee, or watching his “parents” eat dinner as if observing a back-and-forth tennis match. Pay close attention to the scene when O'Connor — also very strong in an emotionally tricky role — “imprints” him. Osment undergoes a transformation with a bit of acting that's breathtakingly direct and subtle.

“A.I.” is a film to see with friends. You'll want to talk about it afterward. That's refreshing in a season crowded with movies you forget before you can even leave the theater.

Oh, and parents should be aware of this: One of the best performances comes from Teddy, a robot teddy bear who accompanies David on his adventures, and insists, “I am not a toy.” Note to parents: Sorry, but when your kids ask for their own Teddy, Warner Bros. isn't planning to market one.

— Steve Murray, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution