Revisiting "D.A.R.Y.L." [by Joe Lehman]

1985’s D.A.R.Y.L., directed by Simon Wincer (“Lonesome Dove” of TV) and starring past child actor Barrett Oliver (The Never Ending Story) is a film that could easily be called a Pinocchio story. That is to say, it evokes the image of Pinocchio as rendered in the 1940 Walt Disney classic (not the mostly forgotten, harsh, serialized 1881 story by Italian journalist and radical activist Carlo Collodi). The Disney image is that of the naïve marionette-come-alive, with a penchant for telling fibs, and a longing desire to be accepted and adopted as a live boy by his would-be father, puppeteer Gepetto.

D.A.R.Y.L.’s place in the context of the Pinocchio tale is overlooked, unlike the similarly themed and better-known Stanley Kubrick/Steven Spielberg collaborative effort 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which references Pinocchio ever so relentlessly. Upon re-watching D.A.R.Y.L. for the umpteenth time I feel it deserves special recognition, especially from lovers of ‘80s kitsch, who seem to constitute its largest fan-base.

          The Daryl of the film’s title is a preadolescent android whose name is an acronym of Data. Analyzing. Robot. Youth. Lifeform. Daryl stands out as a kind of Pinocchio-figure that strives to become authentic as a child on a reverse course from the immortal Tuscan marionette. Where Pinocchio becomes “real” through evolving into maturity, Daryl begins as fully matured and adapts childish qualities through his social interaction with the family and friends that become his by the story’s end.

          The movie begins with the “boy’s” mysterious appearance, following the opening shot of a military helicopter chasing a speeding car, with Daryl occupying the backseat. The chopper pursues the fleeing driver until the vehicle speeds to his demise, off a cliff, but not before the driver has released the child into the woods, where passing motorists discover him and deliver him to social services. From the start it is obvious that the boy has selective amnesia, and can recall only his name, Daryl, and the ability to speak proper English. Yet he is seemingly a prodigy in almost every cognitive and academic ability. He has a perfect photographic memory and talent for reading, for mathematics, and for processing new information in general, especially machines with computers, such as ATMs, an early model of which show up in one particularly funny scene. The movie postpones the explanation for Daryl’s origin, the identity of the doomed driver, and the reason for the helicopter chase until midway. This is a smart move.

Placed in the care of loving foster parents Joyce and Andy Richardson (Mary Beth Hurt and Michael McKean), whom he instantly adores, he makes friends of a neighbor boy, “Turtle” Fox (Danny Corkill), and his older sister Sherie Lee (Amy Linker), the son and daughter of Daryl’s social workers (Steve Ryan and Colleen Camp). Daryl quickly becomes an overnight sensation in Little League and sets an all-time high score on his Atari games – games that will be so familiar to ‘80s kitsch-lovers.

In his 1985 review, the late Roger Ebert writes:

D.A.R.Y.L. is a sort of Charly in reverse. Instead of a retarded man who is allowed, through science, to have a brief glimpse of what it would be like to be normal, what we have here is a super-intelligent thinking machine who gets a taste of being a real little boy. It’s an intriguing premise, and the movie handles it with skill.

I concur with Ebert’s opinion that Daryl’s relationship with his new best friend Turtle is central to the “Pinocchio” character’s evolution into a “real boy”:

 They know there is something odd about the kid when he starts doing his own laundry. That’s not natural for a grade-schooler. Daryl has some other strange attributes. He is unfailingly polite, obsessively honest and bats 1,000 in Little League [a fact pointed out earlier]. Finally, his friend, Turtle, pulls him aside and explains that adults don’t like it when a kid is too perfect. It makes them nervous. They need to connect with him, so they can relax around him. Daryl nods gravely, and his next time at bat, he strikes out.

If Daryl is a proverbial Pinocchio, then the character of Turtle represents the conscience. Turtle, who is portrayed as a typical ten-year-old, is mischievous and adventurous. In many ways he seems the kind of scamp that Carlo Collodi presented in the original Pinocchio. By way of contrast, Daryl is the reverse-Pinocchio. It is as if the characters have mashed up.  

Rebecca West, in her lengthy examination of Collodi’s original serialized novel, asserts that while the tale has “qualities that tie it to the genre of children’s literature” it also has elements that “are more allied to the tradition of adult, ‘serious’ prose fiction.”

The last lines of Rebecca West’s study are especially pertinent: “As in many fairy tales, in Pinocchio too it is the overcoming of obstacles that pushes the tale forward, so that the hero or heroine may be rewarded with the happy ending…In order to understand better the qualities that make of the puppet's tale something much more complex than a simple fairy tale-like story of goodness and obedience rewarded.” Pinocchio achieves his humanity, i.e., his transformation from a marionette to a flesh-and-blood boy through redeeming himself of his selfishness. The preadolescent android “D.A.R.Y.L.”, as the audience bears witness, achieves his humanity by transitioning into the normality of childhood emotion and experience. He becomes simply Daryl Richardson, ten-year-old adoptee. This is achieved by the middle of the movie, rather than the end. It is here, at the midpoint of the film that Daryl’s creator -- the essential “Geppetto” of the story, a government scientist named Dr. Jeffrey Stewart -- enters the picture. He and his colleague Dr. Ellen Lamb arrive as Daryl’s “parents,” come to reclaim their missing amnesiac child from Joyce and Andy Richardson, who have by now come to love the boy as though he were their own.

Only after Daryl is returned to the laboratory from which he was conceived is the truth of Daryl’s origin finally revealed. He was designed for military purposes by the Pentagon as many in the audience will have already suspected from the get-go. Apparently, the doomed driver from the beginning of the story was Dr. Stewart’s other colleague, Dr. Mulligan. Mulligan had begun to feel sympathy for the robot-child and had absconded with him in an attempt to free him from captivity. Upon his fascination with Daryl’s newfound emotions, Dr. Stewart eventually develops the same sentimental feelings. But the android’s transformation from plaid automaton to average All-American boy does not sit well with the typically jaundiced-looking military brass, which immediately schedule Daryl for termination.

With Dr. Lamb’s secret collusion, Dr. Stewart and Daryl make a break for it, initiating the action-adventure themed final stage of the movie. This involves the usual car chases; which Daryl is prepared for via his Atari game expertise. There is even a nod to the 1982 Clint Eastwood actioner Firefox: like Clint, Daryl commandeers a stealth fighter jet. But all this is inessential to the story’s significance as a Pinocchio derivative. Dr. Stewart displays his essence as Daryl’s own Geppetto in the film’s most poignant scene, when as he lies dying from a policeman-inflicted gunshot wound he tells Daryl, “Remember, you are a real person” With his last breath, he says, “I only wish” and then passes away before completing the statement. Perhaps he meant to say he only wished Daryl were his son. Unlike Geppetto, he doesn’t get that chance.

Just as a Blue Fairy transforms Pinocchio into a live boy in the ending of the Collodi story, Dr. Lamb, the last surviving scientist responsible for Daryl’s creation, grants Daryl the same wish, upon the film’s conclusion. After ejecting from his destroyed fighter jet, Daryl lands in a river. Has he drowned? Yes, but Dr. Lamb revives him with an electric charge to the microchip that serves as his brain. This is the final act of Daryl’s transcendence. He then makes a joyous reunion with the Richardson and Fox families.

Comments

[Jill Newnham]

Thank you for writing this piece, which made me re-think the movie as a variant of the Pinocchio legend. Very interesting, and it quickened my nostalgia for the 8os.

[John Brehm]

I don't know this film but I do recognize good writing when I see it. Very nicely done! And now I want watch the movie.

[Chris carroll]

Very well written. I felt like I was watching it as I read it.

[Marty McGuire]

Excellently written! I can picture every nuance, twist and turn of the story and fell in love with Daryl in one short blog. Definitely on my list of “movies to watch” now - and may even come before this year’s Oscar winners! Thanks for writing, Joe.
Marty McGuire