Innocent-looking little boy is dropped off in the middle of nowhere by a man in a car who then proceeds to drive it over a cliff. Fortunately, there is a professional, loving institution not far away for just such cases, and the boy, after being picked up by a kindly old couple and given some lumberjack clothes, is whisked away into its hallowed halls (As a sidenote unrelated to my central thrust, throughout the post-modernist 90's, pop culture has so steeped us in irony and misanthropy that to go back in time and find none of the above has a jarring effect on the contemporary psyche; this accounts for my tone!). Before you can cough twice, he is spirited away to Everytown, U.S.A., to foster at the home of the filmmakers' Ideal Parents: warm, unassuming backyard barbecuers; not religious, magnanimously tolerant of bad language in kids and promiscuity in teenagers. Long story short, this kid is Special and we watch him blossom amidst an Everytown background of Baseball, Elementary School... even an ATM machine makes an appearance. We eventually find out that the reason he is Special is because he was incubated in a test-tube and given a microchip-enhanced brain as part of a Pentagon-sponsored experiment in artificial intelligence. Daryl gets picked up later by some of their scientists under the pretense of being his parents, and is taken back to a Secret Government Installation, where the scientists Run Some Tests on him. Alas, their benefactors at the Department of Defense have decided to nix the project, and along with it the life of this innocent little boy. But he is smuggled away once again by a Scientist With A Conscience, who risks his life to save Daryl from the evil clutches of the heartless military, etc. etc.

This film is really very well made, and does have a genuine heart when it comes to the value of human life. But it is also one of a whole oeuvre of mid-eighties films ("Short Circuit," for example) which heavy-handedly demonize the military, a theme which gets pretty hackneyed and tiresome after the nth iteration. But I guess it was all harmless after all, since we won the Cold War anyway, despite the best efforts of Hollywood. ;-) No, really, it's an entertaining movie and kids'll like it, especially boys.