Steven Spielberg’s latest films, "AI" ("Artificial Intelligence"), offers an intriguing and tantalizing first hour that creatively seduces us to delve into the age-old question of love. However, the rest of the movie – which is supposedly a product between Spielberg and another great filmmaker, the late Stanley Kubrick – is a colossal failure, a total YAWN. "AI" should stand not for "Artificial Intelligence" but for Aborted Intelligence.

Spielberg commits the cardinal sin in storytelling; he doesn’t deliver what he promises in the beginning of the movie. Instead, the filmmaker aborts the story.

I don’t recommend this film at all. It’s not worth paying more than a couple of bucks to go see it and, at today’s theater prices, this means waiting for the video. I have a feeling that this super hyped movie will make the record books not in filmmaking but at how fast it made it into video.

I do recommend, as strange as this may sound, the first hour of this picture. Why? The film’s opening is beautifully executed. And for preachers and teachers the movie’s opening offers plenty of preaching and teaching material about love, hate, obsession, loss, sibling rivalry (a ala Cain and Abel), consumerism and free choice. I must hand it to Spielberg, one of my favorite filmmakers; he did accomplish one good thing in this movie – a great beginning.

As the film opens, Spielberg sets up an enticing story, which asks can an android love? In other words, can something artificial, created by human beings, have the capacity to love? Or is love reserved only for human beings? These are all questions that makes us think about love.

Throughout the ages, poets, philosophers and theologians have pondered and continue to do so today: What is love? And, equally important, how do we love another? Jesus told us that the greatest commandment is to love God and neighbor as oneself (Lk 10:25-37). Therefore, for us Christians, our greatest call is to love. Love, however, is not reserved for Christians alone. All of the major religions of the world acknowledge that love is the greatest call in life. Furthermore, you don’t have to be religious to recognize the great importance of love. To love and to be loved is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, motivating force in human beings.

In AI, all that David (an android child) wants to do is to "love" its adopted, human mother. Actually, this is the primary purpose of the android. A commercial company that manufactures androids and robots for sale created David, played by masterfully by Haley Joel Osment. David is a prototype of a new line of child androids that the company will be selling to childless, lonely human parents. The company’s motivation is not to address a human need, in this case the need of love, but solely to make a profit.

The story takes place in the 21st Century – a time when humanity is technologically at its peak and, ironically, at the brink of disaster as well. The polar ice caps are melting and, as a result, New York City and many other coastal cities of the world are submerged. In this setting, a young couple agrees to take David as a test. The couple’s only child, Adam, is in a comma.

For a short while things seem to be working out. Mom, Monica Swinton, played by Frances O’Connor, gradually comes out of her depression over her comatose son and begins to accept David. She decides to "adopt" David by repeating the words – as per the instructions of David’s manufacturer – that will make the android "love" her. In effect, she is taking David as her own son. Once she speaks these words to David, the android will love her forever. She is cautioned, however, that once David hears these words his programming is irreversible. This means that, if sometime in the future she decides not to keep him, David will have to be destroyed by his manufacturer because he is not re-programmable. And, if he’s not re-programmable, he has no commercial value. Nonetheless, she speaks the words to the android. The story is set. We – the viewers – are hooked. What’s going to happen? Will David be able to love? How will an android – artificial intelligence – make the leap from a thing (a machine) to an organism? After all, only organisms (humans) love, right? Wait a minute, not all organisms have the capacity to love, right? Or do they? Maybe artificial intelligence can gain the capacity to love? Can it?

These are all fascinating questions.

The movie gets better. The couple’s comatose son, Adam, awakens. He comes back home and, as the old cliché goes, the plot thickens. Adam becomes jealous of David and an incredibly delicious situation begins to develop when David also starts getting jealous of Adam – a Cain and Abel story in the making. Hold it. David is an android; he can’t get jealous. Oh, maybe, just maybe he is beginning to experience love. Maybe he’s on the brink of making the leap.

Another interesting development occurs when mom reads the story of Pinocchio to David. At some point, David decides that he wants to become a human so that he may be better able to love his mother and be totally devoted to her. For Adam, a typical kid, however, David’s total devotion to "mom" is too much to take. It becomes pretty obvious that Adam sees David as his rival and, as a result, wants to get rid of him.

As a result, Adam sets up David by convincing him that he will become human if he takes a lock of hair from mom while she sleeps. In the stillness of the night, David sneaks in the bedroom and is about to take the lock when Dad – played by Sam Robards – wakes up. Dad sees David reaching out to mom with a pair of scissors, and thinks that the android is about to attack her. Of course, this is not true. But Adam’s plan works by making David appear dangerous – an android gone haywire. As a result of the incident, Dad wants to get rid of David and return him back to the manufacturer. Mom, however, is not convinced and opts to keep him. After all, she does not want David to be destroyed.

As a result of another incident, however, mom is convinced that David poses a danger to their son Adam. In this occasion, David falls into the pool and brings Adam down with him. David was not intending to drown Adam. He was hanging on to him for protection from Adams’ playmates, who were taunting him. Adam nearly drowns but quickly recovers. However, this is the last straw. The couple decides to return David to the manufacturer.

For whatever reason, mom drives David back on her own. Why dad doesn’t come along is not explained and quite puzzling. After all, he’s the one who brought him home. Oh, well, mom is on her own. As she nears the manufacturer’s plant, however, she can’t bring herself to drop off David directly to the manufacturer. Supposedly, she has a "change of heart" and, instead, drops him off a short distance way. This is supposed to be a touching scene in which mom is trying to save her adopted android "son" by not delivering him directly to the killer (the manufacturer). But the scene doesn’t work at all. Actually, the scene plays more like that of an irresponsible pet owner dropping off an unwanted pet, rather than an act of compassion.

This is the turning point of the movie or, rather, where the story is aborted. The remainder of the movie consists of a series of excuses for special effects and "philosophical" musing of what "life" and "humanity" is all about.

I have no problem with filmmakers expressing their philosophy and view of humanity in their films. Actually, this is a natural occurrence in storytelling. However, this takes place organically in the fabric of the story and characters. But when these views are expressed in a conscious way, the story is lost. This is exactly what happens in AI.

The remainder of the movie is a long, very long exercise of scenes that are thrown together, splattered on the screen, with no connection to what was promised in the opening. The remainder of the movie is comparable to a novelist who writes a great beginning but gets lost and haphazardly throws the rest of the "story" together like a drowning man. And, in the process, kicks in his own thoughts about life, humanity, resurrection, extra terrestrials, the Blue Fairy, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, sin, and other such things. Oh, YAWN. Not that any of these subjects are boring; it’s that they are tossed together with no story development or real connection to the story. You sit there – if you’re not already asleep or walked out – wondering why did you pay money to see this film exercise. And that’s putting it kindly.

There is one interesting question posed by the movie: Did David really love his adopted human mother? After all, the movie is about David loving his mother in the beginning, and, in the rest of the movie, all he wants to do – at nauseam – is to return to mom to "love" her totally. David wants to love her so much that he wants to become human so that he may love her even more. Thus, David is in search of the Blue Fairy so that she will make him human, as she did for Pinocchio. This is an exciting prospect, except for one thing. There is no real connection or parallel to Carlo Collodi’s classic. Spielberg or his research assistants should have at least rented the video of Disney’s production of "Pinocchio". If they didn’t have a card to their local Blockbuster store, I would have loaned them mine.

We’re still left with the question whether David really loved his adopted human mom. The movie would have us believe that he did. However, the movie fails in this department as well. What the movie portrays is more comparable to obsession and not love. David doesn’t love his adopted human mom; he has been programmed to "love" her. David had no say in the matter. This is comparable to hypnotizing someone and ordering to love somebody or performing surgery one someone so that they love a specific person. Is this love? Of course, not. Love is not programmable, no more than it can be forced or ordered on demand. Love is a living thing that may only be taken by choice. Choice is key. One could argue that children have no choice in loving their parents. After all, a child – including an abused child – loves his or her parents no matter what. Well, that’s not entirely true. At some point in our lives, as we grow and mature, we begin to see the virtues and faults of our parents. (Of course, this also applies to our friends and romantic partner.) And, at some point, we chose whether to love them or not. Conversely, love requires that we give the beloved the choice to love us or not. Without the freedom to chose or reject love, there is no love.