Astro Boy: Review By Diaigma

Since 1952, Astro Boy has delighted millions throughout the world through the first ever Manga and Anime series, respectively. This modern retelling of the classic super hero robot, directed by David Bowers, emulates many of the core character traits that has attributed to its success. The excess that he shoved into this film, however, clutters the picture with unnecessary elements that detracts from the original message which Osamu Tezuka meant to convey.

Head Scientist at the Ministry of Science, Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage), is about to unveil his latest creation, the Peace-Keeper, when it suddenly goes berserk and accidentally vaporizes his son, Toby (Freddie Highmore). Obsessed with the loss of his son, Tenma creates a perfect replica of Toby, infused with his genetic memories, to become the most advanced robot ever created. Over time, however, Tenma realizes that this robot can never replace his real son, causing the confused android to slip onto the junk-piled surface of earth. There he finds friends and enemies as Astro learns what it means to live in both worlds and what it means to be a hero.

I will say that the animation was fun to watch and, as an Astro Boy fan myself, was glad to see that Tenma, Elefun (Bill Nighy), and Astro remained true to their characters (Although Astro is more of a pre-teen than an actual boy in this adaptation). The origins and death of Toby were presented uniquely and heartfelt. For the story that was given, the dialogue was well written. However, that’s about all I can say for this film.

The score by John Ottman was rather disappointing, in that there was nothing to establish an identity. He composed a convoluted mess, a busy orchestration, and nothing memorable.

What bothered me the most were two things;

1) Astro Boy was never about human segregation, but human-robotic relations. The film NEVER touched on human-robotic relations, and, aside from Astro, the robots were exceptionally annoying.

2) The story. What happened to the story? When we are introduced to Ham Egg (Nathan Lane), he is a verifiable F*gin, you know, the character from Charles Dickens’ Oliver who takes care of kids only to do his bidding? Same deal as seen here. Instead of a Robot Circus, Ham Egg runs a robot battle arena, reeking just too much of Star Wars Episode II. As much as I love Donald Sutherland, his character here did nothing for this film, but to be a hapless, thrown-in antagonist.

While I am glad to see a film be made of one of my favorite icons, it is disappointing that it didn’t stay on task with the half-a-century stack of resource material preceding it. We can only hope that, in a decade or so, a studio will revisit this wonderful character and bring him to life on the screen, properly.