Astro Boy Review

You knew the day would come. You know that no cherished childhood memory was safe. But you held out hope. you held out hope that when it was time for your beloved Astro Boy to be strapped into the remake chair, he would be given a few minor upgrades and a fresh coat of paint. Instead, he has been beaten beyond recognition by the bat of computer animated children's feature. It is with a heavy heart and a total lack of surprise that I must inform you the Astro Boy did not survive the procedure. This offensive marionette that bears his name may fool the children as they laugh and clap at its antics, but we adults are left bemused, asking "Who is responsible for this crime? Will no one be punished?" Before I continue, you may want to go and change into something black. No? You're right. Astro wouldn't have wanted that.

If you hadn't even heard of Astro Boy before this animated feature, GTFO right now. I hate you. Heard of Atro Boy, but thought it was just a cartoon from the 80's? Well, if you are interested in anime or manga in any way, it is your duty to familiarise yourself with the character and artist that essentially started it all.

Over the years there have been several Astro Boy television and comic series. This latest incarnation covers his origin and first major "boss fight". It goes something like this:

It's the future and the planet has gone to shit. A bunch of retarded scientists decide to escape the pollution by levitating an entire city above the surface of the earth, but well within the earths atmosphere. Fail. Life is great in the floating, robot dependant utopia of Metro City. No one seems to mind that the oxygen is too thin to breath. Dr. Tenma is head of the Ministry of Science and father of the worlds most obnoxious child, Toby. An annoyingly unlikely series of events leads to Toby getting vaporised which is satisfying. Somehow, the hat Toby was wearing survives, even though nothing was left of his body or the other clothes he was wearing. Tenma loses his shit and creates a robot clone of his son. To ensure that iToby 2.0 walks, talks and acts like Toby Classic, Dr Tenma extracts Toby's memories from the DNA found in a hair preserved in the inexplicably impervious hat. *sigh* Yes, your read that correctly. I'm not sure the good Dr realises that his house would be teeming with fresh Toby DNA. Side Note: If you could access someones memories by simply plucking a hair from their head, what implications would that have on criminal investigations or personal privacy?
Anyway, after completing his magnum opus, Tenma takes New Toby home to worship for the rest of his days only to reject him 5 minutes later for making a paper aeroplane. I Can't Believe It's Not Toby does a runner and thus begins his journey of self discovery.

The story told here is by no means a faithful retelling of the classic. Most of the components are there, but it's been "Disneyed" to the max. And not the good old "Kill off Mufasa" Disney, but the "Pooh learnt a valuable lesson" Disney.
It's a family movie so of course it's going to be light hearted most of the time. That's fine, but for a movie to carry any weight it must have a few serious moments and they must ring true. For me, the serious moments in Astro Boy fell flat. I couldn't give a shit about Astro Boy or any of his friends so any conflict was lost on me. As the story progresses we learn about belonging and destiny, but there's the typical dues ex machina that shows up at the end to give everyone a "get out of emotional turmoil free" card that makes these lessons meaningless.

The voice acting is rife with annoyingly thick American accents. (which happens to be true for all English dubbed anime, I might add.) But that should really come as no surprise, I guess.

Astro and Toby are both voiced by the puberty stricken Freddie Highmore who manages to do a decent job of it. Traditionally, Astro is modeled after a 9 year old Toby/Tobio. This time, however, Toby is 13 when he "loses his hat". So while the voice Highmore provides is not the voice Astro SHOULD have, it's appropriate given the age of the character. I for one think it was an act of stupidity to change Astro Boy's age. His cute smile has become an obnoxious smirk.

Dr. Tenma has undergone facial reconstruction surgery, but his chin whiskers and beak nose have survived the transformation. Nicolas Cage is like a double sided hammer in that he has two faces to attack a role with. One being solemn, the other being manic. Nicolas swings at this role with the solemn face, but he doesn't exactly nail it.

President Stone is well voiced by Donald Sutherland and had potential. Unfortunately, Stone is a complete buffoon. He's pretty much just your token antagonist. He wants to destroy Astro and take his energy source to power the new Peacekeeper robot. A better name for it would be Irony-bot^{+Yes, I was tempted to write: iRonny Bot 2.0} since Metro City is peaceful up until the Peacekeeper is unleashed.

Cora can die in a fire. Hey, Cora: If you missed you parents that much, why didn't you just ask Hamegg to drop you home? Or get a fucking taxi! I'm sure your parents would have paid the fare once you got there. Anyway, Kristen Bell does a great "generic American teen girl" that really sells Cora as an uninteresting annoyance.^{+I kept wishing someone would smack the pink out of her hair.}

Hamegg was easily my favourite character because he's the only one who acted like a real person.^{+Yes, I know robots aren't real people. Don't pretend you don't know what I mean.} He looks after the orphaned children and is loved by them. He provides good honest entertainment with The Robot Games. He's a far cry from the evil circus owner he's meant to be based on. I'm not even sure if Hamegg is meant to be a villain in this movie. Nathan Lane does a wonderful job providing the voice of Hamegg and gives one of the most natural performances of the film.

Dr. Elefun is played by Bill Nighy and there's something odd about his performance. Maybe it's because his British accent clashes with the all American cast - with the exception of the RRF which I'll get to in a moment - or maybe it's because he's so somber you'd swear he was on the toke. In the Astro Boy manga and anime series, Dr. Elefun (a.k.a. Professor Ochanomizu) is the head of the Ministry of Science, having taken over after Dr. Tenma wigged out and took off. It was in fact Dr. Elefun that became a father to Astro and raised him to be the upstanding alien puncher we all know and love. In this latest imagining, however, Elefun has been reduced to little more than Dr. Tenma's sidekick. He is still someone who cares for Astro and offers guidance where he can, which is handy 'cos his dad's a jerk.

The Robot Revolutionary Front are a rag-tag trio of idiotic robots that are trying to rebel against "the human oppressors". They don't pose any real threat though as they are governed by Asimov's three laws of robotics. i.e. They can't harm humans and have to obey human commands. Given these restrictions, they resolved to exact vengeance upon Hamegg for his part in the robot games by tickling him with a feather as it is unpleasant but not harmful. Of course, nothing these idiots do impacts the plot in any way (with one frustrating exception) since the RRF are nothing more than a failed attempt at comic relief that feels utterly tacked on. They are like truck nuts ; Some morons might find them amusing, but they are retarded and shouldn't exist.^{+I know I shouldn't use the word "retarded", but it's just so apt.}

Visually the film is a well polished as you'd expect from a big budget remake of a major franchise. The 3D modeling and animation are top notch. My only complaint is that everything is just a bit too soft and cuddly. Astro's impossible hair was always going to be an issue in 3D, but they've pulled it off. You can see his trademark hair spikes swap sides regularly.

Before I wrap things up, I'd like to speak out about some things that, to me at least, don't make any Goddamn sense. Here they are in no particular order:

Why is Hamegg so poor? If the robot games are popular enough to warrant procession down the main street of town, why must he and the children in his charge resort to eating cockroach covered pizza discarded from Metro City? Surely he can afford to eat properly.^{+BTW: Who throws away an entire pizza? You can't tell me they don't have microwaves in the future.} At one point, the children are collecting robot parts for Hamegg in an area overgrown with luch greenery. I've got two words for you Hammy: Vegetable Patch.

Given how idiotically Toby meets his end, I don't know how he lived to be 13.

When Astro is booted up for the first time he falls and crushes a workbench with his immense weight. Not two minutes later, Dr. Tenma picks him up and carries him out of the room. Worse still, at the end of the movie, a young boy puts Astro on his shoulders.

There is robotic, flying squirty bottle and squeegee. The existence of these two robots is an insult. Why can't these functions be performed by one robot?

Tenma's plan not to tell Toby that he was a robot would have lasted about as long is it took for Toby to discover he no longer had a wang.

The floating metropolis of Metro City looks about 2 kilometers across. The suburb I live in is bigger than that and it ain't big.

In the intro, we're told that the people of Metro City don't know what is happening on the surface below, yet they're only a few kilometers from the ground. You're telling me the Ministry of Science doesn't own a telescope? How about you send the fucking window cleaning robots on a recon mission.

Cora and her pals seem to be the only people looking for useful shit in the pile of robot scraps. How can this be?

When trying to convince Astro that ZOG is a lost cause, Cora tells him that they used to have picnics in its head. As if. Even if ZOG's head was empty - which it isn't - it's far to small for anyone to fit comfortable inside.

Even if Hamegg deduced that Astro was a robot, how the hell did he know that he could fight before forcing him into the robot games?

When Astro boy takes flight for the first time, he decides it would be a good idea to tunnel into the side of a mountain and burst out of the summit. While this is a nice little reference to the 1960's series intro, why would someone who has just discovered they can fly assume that they can fly at mach 3 into the side of a mountain?

If Metro City is such a desirable place to live and it's just a small hover car ride from the surface, why is there no border control?

Why are the cars in Metro City confined to the road, even in the chaotic final scenes?

The President of Metro City refers to his workplace as the "oval office". He's not the fucking president of the USA, he's a mayor!

I could go on.

All in all, Astro Boy isn't a bad movie, but it is a bad Astro Boy. Upping Astro's age, floating Metro City, introducing a weak environmental slant, making the Prime Minister a President. These are just a few of the many unnecessary deviations that make me wonder why they bothered to make and Astro Boy movie at all. Well, obviously because of the draw the Astro Boy name has. It really wouldn't take much to re-bage this as release it as a completely different franchise. Hell, they did it with Jungle Emperor Leo. The story is entertaining enough, the cast is competent and the visuals are pleasing.

I'm giving Astro Boy two and a half divinci copters out of five.

Astro Boy Trailer
Astro Boy Japanese trailer <- Does give away a few plot points.