Astro Boy (2009)

The story of Astro Boy has been around since 1952, when it was first published as a Japanese magna (comic book) and then became a television series there a decade later. I, however, knew nothing about this. After a bit of online research, I also learned that Astro Boy is credited with being the first comic to employ the visual aesthetic that would become known as "anime."

It seems odd, then, that it would take almost 60 years to get a feature film out of the story, but in 2009, director David Bowers ("Flushed Away") released ASTRO BOY in both 2-D and 3-D formats with an all-star voice-over cast that includes Freddie Highmore in the title role and Nicholas Cage as his father, Dr. Tenma.

For those of you who know as little as I did, ASTRO BOY is the story of wunderkind Toby, a boy who is too smart for school because his father, Dr. Tenma, is a robot inventor. In this futuristic society, a group of humans literally broke a chunk off the Earth and elevated it into the sky, dubbing it Metro City. There, Dr. Tenma and his companions at the Ministry of Science have helped to nurture a tradition of the most amazing robots, all performing in service to the humans. When better technology is created, the robots are unceremoniously dumped off the edge of Metro City to the Earth below. It will be virtually impossible to watch this without thinking about "Wall-E," which also gave us an Earth-as-scrap-metal-wasteland landscape. In both situations, this situation is created by human consumerism.

When Toby tags along with his father unannounced at the top secret revealing of a scientific breakthrough by one of Tenma's co-workers, he ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. There, two forms of energy are revealed: a "good" blue energy source and a far less stable, or "evil" red energy source. The good blue guys and bad red guys are a not-so-sneaky sign that the liberal Hollywood film machine is alive and well. The political message, however, is not going to be visible to children. As an adult, I immediately detected it and groaned, and to enjoy ASTRO BOY, one must truly ignore this dippy allusion for the remainder of the film, which I somehow managed to do.

With that digression out of the way, back to the story... Toby ends up getting killed when a power-hungry politician (voiced by Donald Sutherland) attempts to commandeer the red energy source. A grief-stricken Dr. Tenma responds to the tragedy by creating a robot in the image of his son and implanting his son's memories and experiences, via a strand of hair found in his ball cap, into the robot. Almost immediately after this experiment proves "successful," however, Tenma realizes that robot Toby is not a true replacement for his son. And just as the aforementioned physical set-up of ASTRO BOY recalled "Wall-E," this moment clearly echoes "Frankenstein." In similar fashion, the "monster boy" is rejected by Tenma and cast out into the world, where he ends up below Metro City on the Earth's surface.

One problem with ASTRO BOY is how very derivative the story is of other stories, though again, little kids won't notice. On Earth, Toby hides his robot identity from a band of orphaned kids who run everything (a la "Lord of the Flies"). The kids are supervised by an adult, Hamegg (Nathan Lane), himself an outcast scientist from Metro City who refurbishes robots and sets them to battle one another for human entertainment in a gladiator-style ring (a la "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence"). As one could predict, Hamegg turns out to be not as nice as we think he is when he discovers Toby's secret and reveals it to the kids who have befriended him. Soon, Toby (now dubbed "Astro") is in a fight for his life to escape one situation while trying to enter another as the situation with the Metro City president and the red energy source has escalated and Toby/Astro sees his involvement in the problem as his true calling and purpose.

Obviously, I didn't see ASTRO BOY in 3-D in theatres, but I thought it looked fantastic, and my son and I really enjoyed the film and the story, as tired and derivative as it was. The hardest part for me was probably in turning off the encyclopedia in my head that found so many connections to these other films. Indeed, the whole experience is derivative of "Pinocchio," which is also the literary reference for "A.I." But no matter. I thought this was a fun family animated film, nowhere near the Pixar level of "Up," but far better than 80% of last year's animated releases like "Monsters vs. Aliens." In fact, I think it was robbed of more recognition.

I don't know how good fans of the original Astro Boy story felt about this film version, but I thought it was a fun, stylish and exciting kids' film, one that I will likely watch again with my son. Some critics have gone after the film for being too grim, especially because Toby/Astro Boy dies repeatedly in the film. I can see that, and this would be my one worry as well. However, my 4 year-old didn't worry about it, so I won't either.

3.0 out of 4