Astro Boy (Review)

I have to admit to never seeing anything related to Astro Boy other than a GBA video game and a parody on "Freakazoid", this American reimagining of Osamu Tezuka's famous manga is my first proper exposure to the franchise. In the movie, Toby the son of Dr. Tenma is killed by a battle robot when General Stone fails to heed some warning about plugging negative energy into a battle 'bot. Stricken with grief, Dr. Tenma rebuilds Toby as a robot, hoping to fully replicate his son in a form where he will be able to defend himself with bizarre upgrades like rocket boosters and guns in his hands. Of course, the new Toby is more than Dr Tenma bargained for and he's also powered by positive energy, something that General Stone would love to get his hands on.

Astro Boy is a middle of the road family film, though it does at least attempt to be more than a fun kids movie. The thing that is most surprising about it is that the movie is pretty dark for a flick aimed at the little ones: a child is technically killed on screen, the movie has strange political undertone to it (General Stone is an obvious model on George W. Bush), Astro Boy is rather harshly disowned by his father and even Asimov's Laws of Robotics play a role in the storyline. Sadly, the movie really missed a great opportunity by choosing not to truly explore any of these concepts (apart from the Toby's death, which is essential to the plot). Sure, most of this would go over the heads of the children watching this, but there's enough decent humor and action to keep them entertained.

The future world that most of the movie takes place in is wonderful to look at, full of funny details and humorous robots. The concepts applied to this portion of the movie are intriguing so it's somewhat depressing that one again the movie forgoes this unique setting for a bland garage dump and a dull sub-plot with some under-developed kids that's just too ordinary and too obvious in children's entertainment. I mean seriously, what was the point of creating a fantastic world that was full of great storyline potential, if they're going to spend half of the movie away from it? The action scenes(when the film finally gets to it) escalates into some fairly impressive sequences of Astro battling giant robots. These scenes are expertly choreographed, and they move at an exciting pace. Action is clearly this movie's strength. I didn't really hate Astro Boy (though I'm sure kids will love it), I just hate that it showed so much potential only to waste it.