Astroboy review - animated movie

Astroboy was created way back in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka as a cartoon which was then turned into an animated series. It was the forerunner of the Shonen Manga Anime style.

The Plot
Astroboy is a robot created by a grieving Dr Tenma to replace his dead son. Due to Dr Tenma's skill the robot is conscious and comes to learn of his power and his destiny.

The Film
This is a really enjoyable film but it is more grown up than you might first think from the trailers.

The film starts with a cartoon style introduction, narrated by Charlize Theron, to the world on which the characters live, a futuristic mess of an Earth. The style is immediately reminiscent of some of the animation in the Matrix offshoot The Animatrix.


There is a lot of agonising over motivations for doing certain things. The relationship between Dr Tenma (Nicholas Cage) and his real son is rather bleak as the Dr is so firmly tied to his work. Dr Tenma's colleague Dr Elefun (voiced by Bill Nighy) seems to be more sympathetic to the boy/robot's plight.

The boy's death is never properly explained, he is just replaced, and so this was something I had to explain to my sons. I wasn't the only one as I heard other parents in the cinema explaining it too. As a result it was quite hard for the younger members of the audience to grasp the transformation of the boy to robot.

There are more resurrections in this film than in The Last Temptation of Christ but you can take those liberties with a robot drama. When we get to the action it concerns an awful lot of fighting of robots of one size or another and the scenes are handled pretty well. The film ends with an immediate lead in to another story about battling aliens, only a glimpse though but a hint that the producers might like to get a series going.

Summary
An enjoyable film with a few flaws but if you are taking your kids there's quite a bit of scary stuff and some unanswered questions. I took my 5 year old and 10 year old and the film could have been shortened by about 20mins as far as they were concerned.