Film reviews
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Sidestepping a more extreme take on prostitution, this is a quietly impressive portrait of a young woman caught in a tragic situation.
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Its backdrop is a rich and fascinating one, but the film is let down by a screenplay and direction that fails to register on a personal level.
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Astro Boy (Film)
Rating: PG
Running Time: 90
Country: USA/Japan
Director: David Bowers
Cast: Kristen Bell, Nicolas Cage, Freddie Highmore, Bill Nighy
Distributor: Hoyts
Release Date: October 15, 2009
Film Worth: $14.50
FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worthAn exciting action-packed story with a host of fantastic voice actors, this is a contender for best animated movie of the year.
With Pixar-Disney and DreamWorks Animation dominating the CGI front, Astro Boy comes as something from left-field. Produced by Hong Kong-based Imagi Animation Studios and directed by David Bowers (Flushed Away), it has the requisite big name voice cast and technical gee-wizardry, but it's also something truly different. Its rich atmospherics are strongly influenced by anime, which is fitting considering the original Astro Boy television show's pioneering place in that genre.
Set partly on a flying island called Metro City, which hovers above the garbage dump that is Earth, this futuristic tale begins with the death of Toby, a schoolboy. His devastated scientist father Dr. Tenma (voiced by Nicolas Cage) fashions a robot that looks exactly like Toby, and is later christened Astro Boy (a well-cast Freddie Highmore). Realising that Toby can't be replaced, Tenma cruelly rejects his creation. Astro Boy - who has human emotions plus super-powers - then finds himself on Earth's dismal surface, where he meets scrapped robots and human children. Wanting to be accepted by the kids, he hides his true robotic self...
That's just the start of an adventure that's loaded with fantastic action and tremendous characters. But there are deeper themes amongst the stunning computer-generated visuals - such as alienation, destiny and discrimination. Like all great films, much care has been invested into the minor characters, and the voice cast is uniformly excellent (Bill Nighy's sympathetic Dr Elefun and Donald Sutherland's power-hungry President Stone are stand-outs).
Sometimes humorous and always involving, the latest Astro Boy incarnation has so much feeling and spirit that its finale brings tears to the eyes. It may be family-friendly, but it's not pitched at the lowest common denominator - anime fans will be in seventh heaven. A definite contender for best animated feature of the year - bring on the franchise!
