In the 22nd century, rising seas are submerging Manhattan and the human population is dying. They build android "Mechas" who complete menial tasks and have no emotions. An experimental Mecha named David is given to a woman whose real son is in cryosleep until his terminal illness is curable. She loves David as her own until her son is cured and left outcast where the son and his cronies bully him into questionable dares like cutting of locks of his mum's hair in her sleep. When the robot company asks for David to be returned, his mum takes him far away to where he will not be found. He meets a male prostitute Mecha called Joe, framed for murder, who helps him on his quest to become a real boy after reading Pinnochio. He ends up on the run before finding a warehouse full of copies of himself for shipping. Having lost his sense of individuality, he jumps into the sea as an attempted suicide only to see what appears to be the Blue Fairy from Pinnochio. He becomes trapped underwater begging to become a real boy to the Blue Fairy (in fact a statue from the now-submerged Coney Island) until he runs out of charge and shuts off. Thousands of years later he is revived by hyper-advanced androids who have no concept of emotion that have replaced humans after they all died out and Manhattan (and the rest of the world) was frozen in an ice age. They create a hologram of the Blue Fairy based on the statue to tell him that he can never be a real boy, but comforts him saying she can grant him a wish. Upon wishing to see his mother, they use the lock of hair he took from her to make a clone of her that will last just one day, which David makes the best day of his life. His mum tells him he is loved, the one thing he always longed for her to say, and the closing narration tells us as he falls asleep that he has gone "to the place where dreams are born."
What a bittersweet ending. Pass the hankie someone, PLEASE.
