Whenever "A.I." wobbles -- whenever, as we're watching it, we're not sure how we ought to feel because Spielberg hasn't shown us how he feels -- Osment's face and body language point due north on the compass. That's not to say we always know where he's going with the performance. It's just that he's a clear barometer of thoughts and feelings that Spielberg sometimes winds around too vaguely and obliquely, almost as if he's afraid to face them too directly.

Osment's face sometimes has an obsidian hardness that Spielberg, in setting the tone and direction and shape of his story, just won't allow himself. Osment's performance is remarkable precisely because it's so sharply defined; frame by frame, its edges and angles and absolute certainty forge the steely challenge of "A.I.": Just how do we feel about this little boy who isn't really a little boy at all?

If it sounds absurd to suggest that a kid knows more about what's going on in a movie than its director -- or if it even sounds like an extrapolation of a dopey platitude like "Out of the mouths of babes!" or "And a little child shall lead them" -- it's important to remember that good actors save bad movies all the time. Particularly at this point in the movies' brief history (it's still a very young art form), a point when Hollywood has such wavering faith in the sophistication of movie audiences, it's a relief to be able to rely on the guarantee that no matter how bad movies get, there will always be good performances. That in this case, one of those performances should come from a child is inconsequential.

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In the context of "A.I.," Osment is an actor first and a kid second. His performance is both a significant contribution to the mythology of child actors, and a testament to the almost mystical inexplicability, the sheer weirdness, of great acting among actors of any age.

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