Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
Appreciation levels of today's animated offerings seem to be squarely of a collective mindset that thinks that only films like UP and CORALINE are worth your time attention because they appeal to adults almost more than they do children, and that movies like MONSTERS VS. ALIENS or CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS or the ICE AGE movies are strictly for the unsophisticated kids audience. What's interesting about ASTRO BOY, the first feature film to spotlight the wildly popular Japanese comic book and animated series, is that I think it straddles the line between light and dark, adult and kids fare rather nicely, and it does so with a smashing visual style that isn't quite equaled by its overly simplistic plot. In and amongst the message of friendship and treating everyone equally and the destruction of the class system (wha?!) are some subversive wonders that I got a real kick out of. For example, the movie opens with a child dying! Yay! Enjoy the hell out of that, you 7-year-old. Also, the primary villain is the President of the United States (voiced by Donald Sutherland). OK, granted he's the old-school, ancient white guy kind of president, but he's the president, and he's trying to kill a little kid for much of the film. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Astro ASTRO BOY the movie attempts something the other versions of the Japanese character never did--to tell an origin story.
Nicolas Cage voices Dr. Tenma, a robotics expert whose life is nearly ruined when his son is accidentally killed. He comes up with the idea of creating the most human-like robot ever, a version of his son named Astro (voiced by Freddie Highmore) that is almost immediately banished from Tenma's life when he realizes he's made a terrible mistake. The action takes place in a version of the future where a functional piece of floating property known as Metro City exists in the clouds above the waste of a planet below, littered by millions of worn out or other wise dysfunctional robots. Astro meets some new friends on the surface, all of whom think he's human. His new friends include Cora (Kristen Bell), a punky little bundle of energy, who eventually grows to trust Astro and allows him to join their gang of youngsters, overseen Oliver Twist-style by Hamegg (Nathan Lane). Ham happens to run gladiator-style robot wars, which Astro is slightly appalled by, since the battles are to the death.
Meanwhile, the President is looking for ways to weaponize Tenma's Astro prototype. The President dons some battle armor (known as the Peacekeeper) and heads out looking for Astro, somehow absorbing all other robots in the process and becoming an ever-growing robot in the process. Not surprisingly, Astro's two worlds eventually do collide, and the inequity between the cloud dwellers and surface dwellers can no longer be avoided. Highmore (best known as Charlie in Tim Burton's CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY) does a decent job voicing Astro and filling him with a sense of childish wonder, especially when he discovers how many kick-ass weapons his body has tucked away for high-pressure situations. I loved pretty much every scene involving the President; he's just so hilariously evil that you kind of wonder how this guy got the job. And Bell is cute even in animated form.
I wasn't blown away by any aspect of ASTRO BOY, but it is a fun, beautifully rendered work that I really wish has been in 3-D. The way the action sequences are directed, it almost felt like it was made to be in 3-D, but even in 2-D I was pretty captivated by the details in this world. Also keep an ear out for some fine voice work by the likes of the incomparable Bill Nighy, Eugene Levy as a servant robot, Charlize Theron, and Samuel L. Jackson as a big-ass robot. The film's plot is fairly simplistic, and this may be a case of getting through the origin story in the hopes that if another ASTRO BOY movie gets made, it will benefit from using a better story. But what's here is better than average, and if you don't like to think too hard during your animated movies, then this is your guy this weekend. Call this is a mixed review leaning in favor of recommending it. I had fun watching the pretty colors, but forgot most of what I saw within hours of it ending.
-- Capone
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