Film Reviews

Astro Boy

• Rating:
• Director: David Bowers.
• Starring: Nicholas Cage, Freddie Highmore, Donald Sutherland, Kristin Bell.
• Details: Hong Kong/US/Japan / 94mins (PG).

An update of the 1952 classic Manga series, which was in turn adapted into a TV series in the '60s, Astro Boy attempts to cover all bases by appealing to older fans and new ones. It's a decent attempt and there's enough spills and thrills to entertain the kids. The intro, narrated by Charlize Theron, sets up this animation: Metro City is a metropolis in the sky where robots are slaves to humans - they do all the dirty work like cleaning up and so on - and are then cast away to the rubbish heap that humans have turned Earth into miles below the city. The man responsible for this utopia is Dr. Tenma (Cage), an ambitious scientist who works so hard he never has time to play with his son (Highmore). When unveiling the new 'Peacekeeper' battle robot to the soon-to-be re-elected president Stone (Sutherland), Dr. Tenma is devastated when the machine malfunctions and kills his son. Driven by grief, Tenma uses all his skills to built a powerful replica of his son, using DNA to inject his son's personality and memories into the now perfect Astro Boy. However, Tenma can't get used to this new version and Astro is cast away to the desperate world below where he is taken in by Cora (Bell) and her crew... And all that in the first half hour - the very busy Astro Boy is old school fun. It even throws in a dash of darkness to scare the kids by tapping into every child's fear that their parents don't want them anymore and this gives this animation an edge to its admittedly simple story. When he isn't scaring the kids, director David Bowers, who proved with Flushed Away that he can direct a spiffing action sequence when he wants to, enthrals his young viewers with enough action scenes in the final third to make up for the sometimes-dull middle section. Older viewers should get a bang out of the tons of references on show here: I, Robot, The Lord of the Flies, Gladiator, Oliver Twist, Robot Wars, Six Million Dollar Man and more. Samuel L. Jackson, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy, Matt Lucas and Bill Nighy all lend their voices.

Review by Gavin Burke