Friday
23Oct2009
Movie Review - 'Astro Boy'
Friday, October 23, 2009 at 1:01AM | Astro Boy
Starring Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, and Kristen Bell  |
There's a considerable amount of unexpected drama in the first act of Astro Boy. I
suppose in retrospect, Example A is compatible with the story. But the second surprise really is one of those things you
don't see coming. If the rest of the film was up to that standard, then we'd have something.
As it is, though, this is a Pinocchio story with a mad scientist angle. Both of those are fine, and where they connect fits
together pretty well, but what surrounds them offers very little to get excited about.
For the uninitiated, Astro Boy is kind of like Japan's Mickey Mouse. The character has been big business there for
about half a century, and a few products featuring the character have made it stateside, but not ever in an official, go-
for-broke kind of way. This film is intended for American audiences, with American humor and voice actors, so there's no
real culture shock involved as with, say, Pokemon, the first time you saw it.
The main character is a robot implanted with the memories of a human boy (Freddie Highmore).
The inventor/father is Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage), but the robot, as lifelike as it is, is
merely that: Lifelike, not alive. Not to Dr. Tenma, anyway. The robot finds himself discarded from Metro City, the only
place to survive the pollution and overpopulation of the planet by jettisoning itself about a mile above the surface.
On the surface, Astro meets some young vagabonds who scour the countryside in search of broken down robot parts for their
ringleader, a strange, seemingly benevolent deposed Metro City scientist named Ham Egg (Nathan Lane). Ham Egg rebuilds the robots, but only to fight each other for the amusement of the citizens left behind
when Metro City made its ascension. You can sense the conflict from here, can't you?
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