Half a century ago cartoonist Osamu Tezuka first published the manga adventures of Tetsuwan Atomu, and ten years later the book was adapted as an anime that caught a firestorm of popularity, which soon made its way to U.S. markets as Astro Boy.
Imagi studios has reintroduced the character as the star of the new animated feature Astro Boy, and the result is visually dazzling, if a little heavy handed on the storyline.
Metro City is a distant-future floating city in the sky, far above the overly-polluted Earth. In the new uptopian metropolis, high-tech robots do man's bidding until they break down, at which point they're discarded on the planet below.
Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) is the head of Ministry of Science in Metro City. His son Toby (Freddie Highmore) is a super-smart school boy fascinated by his father's work, and ultimateley too curious for his own good. The boy sneaks into the military demo of the new Peacekeeper robot, and is accidentally killed right before Tenma's eyes. Desperate in his grief, Tenma builds a robotic replica of his son and implants Toby's memories - as well as every high-level weaponry and defensive capability known to his military masters.
As Tenma eventually begins to accept, Astro Boy is not a replacement for his son. Just as the new Toby discovers he's not a real boy, Dr. Tenma disowns him. Astro flees and, like Pinnochio (whose story was the inspiration for Tezuka's original), he goes on his quest to discover what a real boy is made of.
Visually, the film is brilliant. The bright colors and futuristic setting keep the eyes candied throughout the movie, and kids are going to love the various personified robots, as well as the fun time Astro has as he discovers his various super-abilities. There's some real humor found in Toby's attempts to pass himself off as human among his new friends on Earth, and I found myself laughing just as hard as my three-year-old at the better moments.
The fight scenes are massive, the humor is sharp and the quest is universal, but the emotional depth of a boy getting killed, replaced by a robot which is then ostracized before rising to glory is a bit on the sticky side for little kids. Toby's death scene, as well as his father's muted reaction to it, is understandably homogenized, but the lack of emotional depth rings as a bit of a misfire on an otherwise great moviegoing experience.
