SOURCE: Steyn, Mark. “Circuit Love.” Spectator 287, no. 9034 (29 September 2001): 48-9.

In the following review, Steyn comments that Spielberg is too concerned with making an artistic statement in A.I. and derides the director for overindulging in allusions to past films.

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is based on a (very) short story from 1969 by Brian Aldiss called “Supertoys Last All Summer Long,” about a robot boy who doesn't understand that he's not real. Stanley Kubrick in his mull-a-movie-to-death mode tinkered with it for 15 years and along the way conflated it with Pinocchio—the story of a boy who wants to become real. Kubrick then passed it over to Steven Spielberg, who conflated it with every other bankable myth going—Hansel, Oz, Sleeping Beauty—and for good measure threw in a double homage to Kubrick and to his own back catalogue.

Everything you need to know about the Kubrickian-Spielbergian inflation is...