I’m probably in the minority of reviewers who watched and loved the original black and white cartoon Astro Boy yet found this CGI movie to be quite good. David Bowers, the Director of Flushed Away brings us an adaptation of the original Manga Tetsuwan Atomu (The Mighty Atom), later transferred to the American screen under the name Astro Boy. For lovers of anime, Ozamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy is touted as the original anime, with his large stylized eyes, chibi voice and dynamic art style. Unless you have been living under a rock you have probably seen posters or images online of the boy with his rocket feet ablaze, one arm thrust forward, soaring to assist those in need. The story of Astro Boy is similar to Pinnochio, if you were to outfit the puppet with superior technology in weaponry and defense. He flies, shoots powerful projectiles and can withstand immense damage all while maintaining a child’s innocence and limitless love.

In this adaptation of the story, the rich and privileged have separated themselves from the polluted world by creating a floating city. The city stays afloat many hundreds of feet above the earth which serves as a form of junkyard for robot parts, unwanted people and trash. For anime lovers this may ring familiar to Gunnm: Broken Angel, or Battle Angel Alita, the floating world is exactly like Zalem in that being that it is the pinnacle of modern living, housing speedy, floating cars, advanced robot technology and easy living. The advances in technology has led to robots being the slaves of society, performing all of the jobs and duties that man would rather not do. The general attitude towards these machines is a cold and disdainful one, where even the machines with personalities are treated poorly and if a robot breaks they are tossed to the junk pile on earth.

Dr. Temma (Nicholas Cage) is the mastermind behind the robot movement and is constantly improving the robot technology for the government. At the detriment of his family life, Temma constantly breaks promises to his son Toby (Freddie Highmore) and is always too busy to spend time with him. Toby, like his father is a genius, acing tests, wise beyond his years and able to solve complex Calculus equations on a whim. When his father lets it slip that he is testing a brand new weapon Toby cannot bear to not see it firsthand and sneaks into his father’s facility. As Temma and President Stone (Donald Sutherland) test the weapon, something goes wrong and Toby is killed when he gets stuck sneaking in to see his dad’s work.

Temma’s heart is broken at losing his son and like any genius he feels as if he can remedy the situation. With many sleepless nights and an obsession bordering on insanity, Temma creates a super robot in the guise of his son adding in his memories to make the robot behave like Toby. The creation is a success and at first things are going well until Temma realizes that there are huge differences between the robot and Toby’s personality. The things Toby used to love and cherish are different for the robot who chooses fun and games over complex equations and reading. Unable to deal with this, Temma then thinks its best to destroy his abomination of a creation and the robot escapes to the earth below.

The robot, dubbed Astro by a few friends he makes on the earth’s surface, finds that robots are hated by the humans who inhabit the earth. How can you blame them when robot parts are rained down on them daily and the facts that robots are a symbol of the rich and privileged. Due to this mistrust of machines, Astro hides his identity from his new friends led by Cora (Kristen Bell), a tough little girl about his age. The kids take Astro to meet their guardian Hamegg (Nathan Lane), a junkyard raider and ex robot scientist who takes pleasure in rebuilding machines from the scrap. At first things are great as Astro has fun with the orphaned kids, eating old pizza thrown down from the floating city and helping Hamegg rebuild robots. One day it is revealed that the reason why Hamegg was building robots was to train them to fight and destroy each other in the gladiatorial “robot games”, he also reveals that he knows Astro’s secret and forces him to be the main fighter in the next tournament. Angry with Astro for not telling her his secret, Cora at first watches scornfully as Astro fights robot after robot, but her heart melts when Hamegg forces him to fight Zog, a large construction robot that he himself had revived using his own mechanical heart. When Astro and Zog refuse to fight each other, Hamegg interferes and forces Astro to begrudgingly save his life just before President Stone’s military robots swoop in to capture him.

Helbent on acquiring the power that drives Astro Boy’s heart to use in a military machine, President Stone has been looking for him for some time before locating him on the earth’s surface. With Cora’s love gone and his father no longer wanting him, Astro Boy decides that his life is no longer worth keeping and surrenders to be powered down in order to take his heart. When Temma sees the melancholy expression on Astro’s face as he takes his heart, he changes his mind and begins to love his robot son again. With renewed vigor, plus Cora and company flying up to the city to help him, Astro Boy confronts the General’s powerful war weapon and fights it with all his might. In the end it takes the heart of a machine to remind humanity how to love and accept one another regardless of status and build.

I found the story to be delightfully dark and touching. The comedy relief of the goofy spray and wipe robots and the Robot Revolution seemed to be strategic plants for the kids watching the movie but the overall theme and story was an extremely adult one. I think the trailers that were meant to fill the theater seats did this movie a disservice by making it appear to be light-hearted and childlike, they hugely misrepresented what I saw and I think that had they conveyed the feel a bit better it would have done better at the box office. The art style took some time to grow on me with the soft textures and shading on the characters but once you get into it, it seems very well put together and relative. The biggest treat to all of this was the ending, it had a very good ending and aside from the strange pacing throughout, I really thought it to be spectacular. This CG should have also been in 3D, with the swooping shots of Astro firing into the screen, it would have been a huge bonus to IMAX, but still it was a beautiful movie to watch.

  STAR RATING: (7/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★