In theaters

A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Written and directed by Steven Spielberg. 145 minutes. PG-13.

Since the story behind the new Steven Spielberg film, “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” has everything to do with the reason it succeeds and why it ultimately fails, we’ll begin with the story, which goes like this:

In 1969, Brian Aldiss, a science-fiction writer of some note, wrote “Supertoys Last All Summer Long,” a haunting short story about a boy forced to face the real reason his mother doesn’t love him: He’s a robot, something the boy didn’t know.

In 1983, Stanley Kubrick, attracted to the ugliness, despair and loneliness at the story’s core, optioned the piece, toiled over it for more than a dozen years, and decided, at some point, to introduce a “Pinocchio”-like element, favoring the idea that machines and humans can never become one – and neither should this little boy.

Enter Spielberg, a friend of Kubrick’s, who agreed to take the reins when Kubrick died in 1999. Working from Kubrick’s notes and storyboards, Spielberg wrote the script himself, expanding its themes to serve his own interests.

And that’s where things get sticky. With each director possessing such entirely different mind-sets and sensibilities, was a collaboration between the icy Kubrick and the warm-and-fuzzy Spielberg a good thing?

The answer depends on what’s drawing you to the film. If you’re interested only in seeing a good Steven Spielberg movie, rent the new DVD version of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” But if you’re interested in witnessing the curious wreckage left in the wake of two great directors colliding onscreen, “A.I.” is worth seeing.

After an intriguing opening that lays the foundation for the story of David (the superb Haley Joel Osment), a robotic boy who longs to be human, “A.I.” becomes a fantastic mess that’s at times fascinating, dull, inspired and rote. Technically strong yet emotionally sterile, it raises a handful of questions about the meaning of love and our responsibility to those high-tech toys we’ll one day create in our own images, but it ultimately finds Spielberg reaching too hard to honor Kubrick’s vision – not to mention his own.

The film is composed of three acts – the first nicely captures the chill of Kubrick, the second gives itself over to the sap of Spielberg, and the last is a weird hybrid of each director’s personal style. In the best part of the film, the first third, David is introduced to Monica and Henry Swinton (Frances O’Connor and Sam Robards), an unlikable couple whose terminally ill son, Martin (Jake Thomas), is being cryogenically preserved until a cure can be found to heal him. Desperate to fill the hole left by their son’s absence, the Swintons use David, a walking, talking doll programmed to love by its creepy creator, Allen Hobby (William Hurt).

But when David is eventually abandoned by Monica, who he is certain is his mother, the movie, which heretofore had been devoid of emotion, takes a dramatic turn. Spielberg, eager to get things moving, breaks from his canny imitation of Kubrick’s style to employ all the tricks for which he himself is known: rousing action, teary-eyed sentiment, innocence threatened, the search for home, love lost and found. It’s a jarring transition, but Spielberg, ever the entertainer, can’t help himself.

Now, with David lost to the wilds of the world – he eventually meets a character named Gigolo Joe (Jude Law, astonishing) who takes him to the evil city as the wolf did to Pinocchio – the rest of the film demands that we invest ourselves in a machine whose love isn’t real and never can be real. It’s artificial, the work of transistors, battery packs, animatronics. But does the artificiality of David’s love make it any less valid simply because he’s a robot? As “A.I.” presses into its second hour, Spielberg struggles to find an answer that wouldn’t please just Kubrick, but also himself.

The result is an ending that’s bizarre, manufactured – and absolutely inevitable. Spielberg wants us to weep, but Kubrick wants us to think. Audiences will find a middle ground, but it won’t be one that satisfies.

Grade: C+

Video corner

THE TASTE OF OTHERS. Directed by Agnes Jaoui. Written by Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri. 112 minutes. Not rated. In French with English subtitles.

In spite of what its title might otherwise suggest, Agnes Jaoui’s Academy Award-nominated film, “The Taste of Others,” has nothing to do with cannibalism – at least not in the literal sense.

The film follows a group of abstract artists and actors, a middle-aged business tycoon, his impossible wife, and the businessman’s bodyguards, each of whom is ensconced in a tumultuous affair. Everyone here either knows each other or will come to know each other as the film explores how the personal tastes of some can eat away at the nerves of others.

Grade: B+