Spielberg the Serious - Steven, overview of director's work

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Sept, 2001 by Christopher Sharrett

Spielberg seems not to be aware that there is an entire sci-fi sub-genre about the moral ramifications of the mistreatment of robots ("2001," "Westworld," and "Bladerunner," to name a few). At times, this picture looks naive, both cinematically and morally. For someone who seems to insist, with many scholars, on the singularity of the Holocaust as a historical moment of special moral instruction not to be trivialized, it is extraordinary that "A.I." has a robot holocaust, with androids shoved into a concentration camp complete with piles of cybernetic debris. Is Spielberg playing with a full deck? Before the film is over, he is bringing in material apparently left over from "E.T" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," not wanting to quit until everyone's reaching for a hanky. If Spielberg is the serious filmmaker of the new industry, I'll settle for the B-feature drive-in fare of the 1950s.

Christopher Sharrett, Associate Mass Media Editor of USA Today, is professor of communication, Seton Hall University, South Orange, N.J.