When Imagi Studios announced they were working on adaptations of “Astro Boy” and “Gatchaman,” my initial reaction was one of incredulity. “Wait… what? The people who did “TMNT” doing two classic anime series as CGI showcases?” That was quickly followed up by me worrying about how much the film was going to suck.
Turns out those worries were unfounded. “Astro Boy” is a 2009 take on the classic Osamu Tezuka story. It tells a new story while keeping the essential heart of the original. It has its issues though….
“Astro Boy,” for those who don’t know how this story goes, is essentially a “Pinocchio” tale told through Tezuka’s post-World War II lens. In the futuristic, floating Metro City, after Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) loses his son Toby (Freddie Highmore) in an accident, he attempts to build a robot in his son’s image. The robot is almost exactly like his son, but it isn’t, and Tenma can’t really love him.
That’s where things branch off from the original. Toby (later renamed Astro) is chased by government forces led by the corrupt President Stone (Donald Sutherland) and falls to the surface, where he makes some new friends, including the sassy Cora (Kristen Bell), and really starts to fit in. Of course, that doesn’t go so well when his problems follow him.
Things get complicated, more complicated and more dark than your average family adventure film. And that’s not a bad thing.
The film, obviously, wouldn’t be “Astro Boy” without a child dying onscreen in the first act. It’s also chock full of social commentary in how it treats robots and sometimes seemingly wants to use Astro himself as a human-robot metaphor for racism. In the age of Obama, it might just be so. One scene towards the end of the movie carries a political slogan that seals the deal: “It’s not time for change.”
“Astro Boy” also carries considerable celebrity clout. Besides Cage, Sutherland, Bell and Highmore (who has a few issues with his American accent), we get Eugene Levy, Bill Nighy, Nathan Lane, Charlize Theron and even Samuel L. “mother****ing” Jackson.
The film’s a lot of fun to listen to and a lot of fun to watch, but the plot suffers. For starters, everybody besides Tenma and his colleague Dr. Elefun (an underused Nighy) just write off the fact they watched a kid die. We get character development with Cora tantalizingly teased then interrupted. Astro doesn’t realize he’s a machine until he can talk to other machines (maybe the steel hair and galvanized underpants could have tipped him off?). Most of the toys that make Astro, Astro aren’t seen until the last five minutes, down to the butt machine guns. The ending is covered in flowers and unicorns and wrapped in a pretty little bow, something the show never was. Issues like the racism metaphors and the class divisions between Metro City and the trashed, polluted (ala “Wall-E) surface are glossed over and never discussed again.
And while the film has the iconic characters like Astro, Tenma, Elefun and Ham Egg, Astro is the only one who looks like Tezuka drew him. The rest aren’t quite as faithful to their lineage. They look more Western. But I guess, like the voice talent, it’s what puts butts in seats.
But if you watch it knowing it’s different, knowing there are going to be plotholes, and accept them, you’ll have great fun with “Astro Boy.”
