In the previous review, David’s “brother” had woken up, and the sibling rivalry had begun. A series of mishaps ensues, culminating in the contrived pool scene, but before addressing the unfortunate party, I’d like to mention that during the rivalry segment, it becomes apparent that Teddy is more sentient than David. There’s no reason for this within the story, but it seems like Spielberg is wanting Teddy to serve as a soulless Jiminy Cricket for David.

This doesn’t really work for multiple reasons, but the most obvious problem in the beginning is that this toy bear is an earlier model of an AI, and it’s not even on par with the other robots in the script. So, there’s no real reason for Teddy to grab the mother’s hair.

This event becomes important to the story later on, but this grabbing of the hair is really a plot hole because if the robot has no real investment in David as it ought, then it shouldn’t pick up the hair, but if it does have feelings of concern for David, then it shouldn’t want to pick up the hair either because what purpose could the hair serve after David is caught and nearly harms Monica?

Moving on to the pool scene. The family is celebrating Martin, the real son’s, birthday. A gang of boys flock around David, curious about this robot child. One of the boys wants to see if David can feel pain. He takes a metal spatula being used to cut the cake and insists that he isn’t going to cut David’s skin. He simply says he wants David to tell him when he feels it. The boy presses the point of the spatula into David’s skin, and David freaks out. He runs behind Martin, telling Martin to protect him and, for some incomprehensible reason, jumps into the pool while still holding his “brother.”

So, before going on, let’s pause. First of all, if David is still a robot and the kid told him he wasn’t in any danger, then why does the robot panic? But if David is a “real boy,” then he should have enough sense to know that the kids are going to make fun of him if he acts like a coward and freaks out over being poked by a utensil.

It’s not even a knife. It’s just a cake spatula. So, this over-the-top reaction is completely unjustified. Furthermore, there’s no reason for him to jump into the pool. I think the idea was for him to fall into the pool, but in the shot, they clearly jump. David could’ve just as easily run to that mother he imprinted on.

By the way, where is she? And even if David’s programming was taking over, a robot should be programmed to know that a human can’t breathe underwater. What kind of robotic programmers give an android consciousness but then forget to stress the importance of air? Also, when David saw that Martin was starting to struggle, why didn’t he let the kid go?

The end result of this contrived catastrophe is that Martin almost drowns, and that settles the matter. David has got to go. To make sure the situation hurts the audience as much as it can, David seems totally unaware of his mistake and begins drawing a bunch of nice pictures for his mommy.

This is supposed to be a throwback to a scene in the short story, and it’s also supposed to make the audience feel sympathy for both David and Monica. I, however, was perplexed by the fact that David seemed to have no idea what’s going on. He nearly killed his brother, and, so far as we know, he never even bothered to check on poor Martin. This doesn’t help David’s status as a sympathetic character. Perhaps Spielberg was going for innocence, but I think “dense” is a more apt description.

Anyway, Monica promises to take David and Teddy on a drive the following day. David is very happy, and everyone else is supposed to be very sad because everyone knows what’s about to happen next. Earlier, in the film, it’s mentioned that if David is taken back to the factory from whence he came, he will be destroyed.

Monica, knowing this, can’t bring herself to complete the drive. She stops before reaching David’s final destination and takes him into a forest. David begins laying out a blanket for their picnic, but Monica tells him that she plans to leave him there. He cries, she cries, and both actors do a very good job selling the scene. I just couldn’t buy it because the setup was so unbelievable.

First, this scene has an escalation issue. To put it simply, other things should’ve been tried before letting David go. Perhaps they could’ve taken him back to the factory to see if they could install some safety features. Perhaps they could’ve given him to another couple and tried to override the imprinting. There are a number of things that should’ve been tried before reaching such a climactic moment in the script.

Going from a happy family with competitive brothers on Tuesday to, “I’m leaving one of the wretched children in the woods,” on Thursday wasn’t believable. Having Monica and her husband fight about how dangerous David was after the scissors incident simply wasn’t enough either, and, even if it were, then the escalation steps should’ve taken place before the pool party.

However, the largest problem of all with this scene is that there are too many conflicting components coming to a head. Steven Spielberg has written himself into a corner. He wants David to be both a human and a robot whenever the script requires. He needs Monica to be both a sympathetic figure to justify David’s goal of becoming a real boy, but at the same time, he needs her to also be representative of the world that will always reject David because, remember, that the bait-and-switch of this film is rather than asking if robots can love, Spielberg wants you to see that humans will never love them back.

He’s going to pull on your heartstrings to obfuscate from that all-important question: what is the definition of “real,” or to put it more directly, is endowed value real? I’ll explore the forest scene further in the next review.