Robot hero's tale surprisingly fun

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Astro Boy (voiced by Freddie Highmore) is dumped from the upper class of Metro City only to find a surrogate family below it.

The original Astro Boy TV series by manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka first saw the light of day way back in 1963, but it's doubtful his revival in this animated feature film was targeted to an audience of middle-aged comic-book-store-dwellers who have kept the faith.

Nope, Astro's rebirth probably has more to do with the success of the Transformers movies, a franchise that likewise took an old Saturday morning robot show and gave it a contemporary gloss.

What is unexpected is that the movie from director David Bowers (a former story artist on films such as Shark Tale and Prince of Egypt) is as fun as it is. It may lack Transformers' elaborate special-effects-powered torque, but it does have more soul and more wit than may be gleaned from the collected works of Michael Bay.

As long as we're invoking other movies, the story feels like a juvenile-friendly version of RoboCop, satiric content included, with an additional healthy dollop of AI: Artificial Intelligence.

Astro starts life as Toby (voiced by Freddie Highmore), the human son of genius scientist Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage). In an disastrous experiment orchestrated by the power-mad President Stone (Donald Sutherland), Toby is absorbed into the body of a killer robot run amok. Using a combination of robotic and genetic technology, the grieving Tenma recreates Toby in robot form, complete with an array of super powers.

But faced with his son's... roboticism, Tenma agrees to discard his creation, and Toby/Astro is dumped from the floating upper-class burg of Metro City to the garbage-clogged earth below.

There, Astro is adopted by a family of human outcasts, who live with the Fagin-like exile Ham Egg (Nathan Lane), who remodels robots for gladiator combat.

Action ensues.

Where the Transformers movies opted for a tone of easily digestible, flag-waving patriotism, Astro Boy has a more wised-up view of the world.

Here, the term "upper class" is made literal in Metro City's floating realm. The movie also harbours a healthy suspicion of military might, embodied by President Stone (Donald Sutherland makes the vocal most of his character's lust for power). By the time Stone himself is absorbed by the same cyborg that killed Toby, he becomes an embodiment of the military-industrial complex.

The movie is sufficiently engaging for the younger audiences (see Maya Sullivan's review), but those aforementioned middle-aged comic-book-store-dwellers aren't left out of the fun either.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 23, 2009 D6