Astro Boy (*½)

Directed by: David Bowers

Starring (voices): Nicholas Cage, Charlize Theron, Kristen Bell, Eugene Levy, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Nighy, Freddie highmore, Donald Sutherland, Nathan Lane

Seen: December 10^th 2009

*½ Out of ****

If the target market of Astro Boy was truly intended to be adventurous children, I would have advised a slightly less creepy or adult-minded script, and if the target market had been adults, I would have recommended a much more grown-up approach to how it was done. Astro Boy sits right on the divide; in trying to cater for both adults and children, it caters for none.

One major theme of Astro Boy is the loss of a child and the genius father subsequently replacing the child with a self-built robot – a bit heavy for kids, given that the film might (even if only in the back of a kid’s mind) give some kids the idea that they are replaceable. The movie also boasts an irrepressible president willing to do everything (including bending morals) to be re-elected, even if that means alienating some good people for his own selfish “greater good”. I believe that politics (and especially power grabbing at any cost type politics) should be left out of it as long as possible, not rubbed into children’s minds from as young an age as possible; especially when the political villain effectively disappears into the massive monster at the end of the movie (without the monster being well-identified as being taken over by the politician’s conscience)…

Some parts of Astro Boy are quite entertaining, and two of the three involve explosive action scenes. The first is a military test (of the Peacekeeper) gone wrong. The second involves gladiator style battles involving some vicious robots pitted against each other. The third is a small throwback to Da Vinci, with Toby (robot-Toby) building some of the great historic figure’s inventions, and pretty much having fun while at it. In the first military test Doctor Tenma’s (Cage) son, Toby (Highmore), dies, and after this he secludes himself to his laboratory, working day and night to create the perfect replica of his son, in robot form. But the new Toby is different, and Tenma almost immediately rejects him, just as the military finds out the Tenma used the energy core intended for the next Peacekeeper as Toby’s heart and power source.

The movie offers absolutely nothing original, being in itself a modern day kind of Pinocchio. Real life movies like I, Robot and animated films like Robots have explored the whole robot world much better, and the small troupe of characters employed as comic relief in this movie, the RRF (Robot Revolutionary Front), is downright stupid. Extremely so. Astro Boy is merely a jumble of action and fight sequences sown together by the type of 3D animation that is stock standard nowadays, nothing seems special and fantastic in the way even small moments in every Pixar movie does. Even the voice-work is uninspiring (Nicholas Cage, I’m looking in your direction…).

Astro Boy then, is not the kind of animated movie that you’ll remember after seeing. It is, in fact, quite forgettable, and as such I cannot recommend it for any reason whatsoever. Move along down the line of mass produced 3D animated movies, hopefully the next one will be better…