Source: MovieJungle.com
By: Eric Sloss
Writer, Movie Jungle
“Astro Boy” is an animated film based on a popular Japanese manga and television series. The current “Astro Boy” maintains the spirit and vitality of the original source. It is not going to contend for the Best Animated Movie at the Oscars, but it should entertain the target audience that it is aiming for.
Toby (voice of Freddie Highmore) is a high achieving boy pushed hard by his distant scientist father Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage). Tragically, Toby is killed at Tenma’s work place. The government was hard at work with two different power sources. There is the blue power source that is good, clean and has a positive effect. Then there is the red power source which creates more aggression and is hard to control. You would be probably be right to assume that the filmmakers are making comparisons to the current political climate in this country. It is no matter since kids won’t pick up on these high concept political allegories.
Tenma is distraught with his son’s death, so he creates a robot with the blue energy source. He puts Toby’s memories into the robot. Tenma quickly realizes that the robot isn’t the same at Toby. Meanwhile there is trouble brewing in Metro City. Metro City floats above Earth. Humans are waited on hand and foot by robots. Robots are discarded once their use is no longer needed. Earth is basically a dump for all unwanted robots and unwanted humans for that matter.
President Stone (Donald Sutherland) is low in popularity and wants to take on the rebels from down below. He wants both power sources and tries to go after Astro Boy to get the elusive blue source. Astro Boy discovers that he has powers like being able to fly and cannons in various parts of his body. He barely gets away from Stone and his cronies.
Astro Boy falls down to Earth and meets up with some scavenger kids. The kids are led by a man named Hamegg (Nathan Lane). Any comparisons to “Oliver Twist” are warranted. Hamegg rebuilds broken down robots and gets them ready for gladiator like competitions. There is also a movement among robots to revolt against their human captives and get more freedoms.
All of this leads to the eventual confrontation between Astro Boy and Stone. “Astro Boy” does have a lot of stories competing for your attention on the screen. There is the father dealing with the loss of his child, robots fighting for equality, a hawkish president looking for a fight to boost his popularity, a robot trying to figure out where he belongs and scrappy kids just trying to survive. “Astro Boy” would have been wise to condense some of these stories down. The movie does seem to borrow from earlier animated movies like “Wall-E” and “The Incredibles”.
“Astro Boy” still is a lot of fun with great action scenes and some funny lines. The political material is heavy handed at times and may rankle some audience members. Kids though won’t catch on and will enjoy the proceedings. That should be the most important aspect to “Astro Boy”.
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