NEW YORK -- Is cloning a fundamental scientific breakthrough that will ultimately cure most human ailments, or a bunch of cackling men in white coats playing God?

Although director Michael Bay's explosion-riddled sci-fi flick The Island doesn't pretend to pose any sort of ethical stumpers, the movie's stars have their own firm beliefs on the hot-button topics of stem cell research and Xeroxing humans.

"The way we portray it in The Island is totally, absolutely unethical, to clone human beings and try to keep them in a vegetative state to harvest them," said Djimon Hounsou, who plays a mercenary hired to hunt down Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson's carbon-copy humans.

Ditto for the bizarre but burgeoning business of cloning deceased pets, says Hounsou.

"That is absolutely insane. It's unethical. It's just - excuse me - stupid."

Stem cell research, which shows promise as a way to cure disease and regenerate tissue, is another matter.

"The need to do stem cell research, it's absolutely important for the advancement of human beings," said Hounsou. "Not to the extreme that we depict in The Island. No."

Steve Buscemi, who plays a worker at the clone facility who befriends the runaway replicants, agrees.

"I think stem cell research should be supported and funded, and that work should continue," Buscemi said.

"I think that is quite different from cloning a full human being and harvesting that person to use for body parts.

"That, I think, is awful, and hopefully we'll never go in that direction. But because the technology is most likely there to do it, it is something that has to be watched."

But don't think too much about it, cautions Johansson. The actress says The Island isn't meant to be a message movie.

"I don't feel like films necessarily always have to deliver the big picture or be so preachy and boring," she said.

"Particularly if you find it to be offensively preachy."

Still, she wouldn't mind having a clone of herself. Not so that she could star in twice as many movies, but so that she had someone to help out with dull chores.

"I'd just have her do simple household tasks.

"Folding the laundry, maybe trying on clothing so I could see what I might look like, do the grocery shopping, change the toilet paper roll," she said.

"Things I don't like to do."