D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)

(Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) Hey, I’m old enough to remember seeing D.A.R.Y.L. not just in the late 1980s, but watching it in grade school! The film was considered innocuous and fun enough to show to kids, I guess. Revisiting the film much later does offer a few surprises. In some ways, the film is intensely formulaic—the moment you have a kids-who’s-really-a-robot, and have him be brought back in government custody after a first act free to live in normal suburban America, there’s not much doubt what will happen next. But D.A.R.Y.L. occasionally goes beyond the strict minimum in ensuring decent thrills for its younger target audience. The opening car chase is surprisingly well done for a kid’s film, and using the SR-71 plane as an element of the climax is still something that gets me smiling. The rest of director Simon Wincer’s film, however, is both overly familiar and weirdly written—the usual mix of military super-soldier research, middle-class moral values, cute gags that raise questions that the film isn’t interested in answering, and some tragic moments sandwiched in between the rest. Plus, a lot of wildly convoluted material that feels about as natural as the title acronym (“Data-Analyzing Robotic Youth Lifeform”… yeah). The release of the film predating the introduction of the PG-13 rating means that the film often feels a bit older than its stated PG rating (plus the more freewheeling 1980s factor). Still, it’s not occasional quirks and moments that prevent D.A.R.Y.L. from remaining, even today, a rather innocuous pick for any pre-teen.