Rated:

Steven Spielberg's ambitious, dark-toned fable for the new millennium takes the story of Pinocchio, gives it a daring twist and decks it out with terrific special effects. Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) plays an android child, programmed to love and allocated to a couple whose own critically-ill son has been cryogenically frozen. When the real son recovers, the robot boy is left to fend for himself in a brutal world that doesn't want him.

In a difficult role, Osment proves once again what a fine young actor he is, while Jude Law gives a showy performance as his guide-cum-protector in the dangerous land of mechanised outcasts. This is by far the director's bleakest work and Osment's desperate quest to become a "real" boy and win back the love of his human "mother" is a disturbing one.