D.A.R.Y.L.

   Film (1985). World Film Services/Columbia. Dir Simon Wincer, starring Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean, Kathryn Walker, Josef Sommer, Barret Oliver. Screenplay David Ambrose, Allan Scott, Jeffrey Ellis. 100 mins. Colour.

   D.A.R.Y.L. is a Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform but, when "he" (Oliver) wakes up amnesiac in the woods, he thinks he is just a small boy, Daryl. Adopted by a pleasant family, he learns not to show his superintelligence and coordination too obviously and makes local friends, but then is located by the scientists who made him, almost terminated by the military, escapes . . . and so forth. There is a happy ending. This film is fairly obviously aimed at children and is competently and even engagingly made, but it never ignites; even those sf riffs proven successful by Steven SPIELBERG and here borrowed from him (most obviously - E.T. - the alien being sheltered in suburbia who undergoes death and resurrection) remain comparatively inert.

   PN