It seems like every new animated movie that comes out these days is totally awesome. I don’t remember being this blown away by animated movies in general ten or fifteen years ago, even the Oscar-winning ones. The Best Animated Feature Film Oscar is only eight years old (the first one went to Shrek in 2001), and despite some controversy over a common belief that it tends to disqualify animated films from Best Picture nomination (Beauty and the Beast is still the only animated film ever even nominated for Best Picture, in 1991), it has still generated more box office success to animated films and greatly increased their relevancy in modern cineplexes, and the resulting improvement in quality and star-power is as clear as ever in Astro Boy.

The story takes place in a bittersweet future where humans have so polluted the earth that the wealthy elite have taken all of Metro City and lifted it into the sky, turning it into a hovering paradise high above the polluted surface below. Scientists working with a meteor that fell to earth have extracted two ultra-powerful energy sources, Blue Core Energy (the good stuff), an Negative Red Energy (the unstable, evil stuff). Meanwhile, a young boy named Toby (voiced by Freddie Highmore) is a science prodigy, just like his scientist father Dr. Tenma (Nicholas Cage), until he gets too close to one of his father’s military weapons demonstrations and is killed. Consumed by grief, Dr. Tenma throws himself into the creation of a robot made to look like him and even fitted with the real Toby’s memories, so even the robot will think he’s Toby.

Of course, your predictability radar will be beeping like crazy at this point. I told myself that if the big conflict of the movie is the robot Toby finding out He’s Not A Real Boy, the disappointment would be pretty spectacular. Roger Ebert completely missed this point when he wondered in his review if the robot Toby wondered why he could fly. Well yeah, Roger, he did wonder. That’s why as soon as he discovered this ability, he rushed to tell his father, who in turn informed him that he’s not only a robot, but that he only reminds him that the real Toby is gone and so he doesn’t want the robot Toby around anymore. And all this is in the first 20 minutes or so of the movie. Something that a lesser film would have made one of the story’s major conflicts was revealed right at the beginning, and thus the movie has to set off in a whole new direction. This is good story-telling!

I won’t go into much detail about the rest of the film, except to say that Toby finds himself alone on the post-apocalyptic Earth’s surface (which is straight out of WALL-E), and that he meets a lot of humans and robots and not a single cliché. But I should also admit that I am not familiar with the original Japanese manga character or either of the previous television adaptations, but as an animated family action film, Astro Boy is more than able to stand on its own. I do wish that the story was fleshed out a little more than it was, rather than the emphasis being placed on big effects and action sequences, but those sequences are pretty awesome so I shouldn’t really complain.

Donald Sutherland gives a hilarious performance as the President (of Metro City or America or the world I’m not quite sure), who is a military-minded war-monger with steadily decreasing poll ratings despite having “influential friends from Texas.” He plans to regain his higher poll standing by getting his hands on the Negative Red Energy and using it to put on a show of military might. Nicholas Cage is only in the beginning and end of the movie, but he gives a quiet, subdued performance and has a couple of emotional moments that are actually pretty moving. There’s also a huge list of other stars in the film, although none that really give such a good performance that it overshadows what’s going on on screen. Even Samuel L. Jackson, who I think only speaks a total of maybe 10 or 15 words in the whole movie. Nevertheless, they are good performances across the board.

Ever since I set my first world record with my Monsters vs. Aliens review, my theory that one of the marks of a good animated movie is having something for children and for adults, and even more now to have clever homages back to previous films, whether animated or not, and Astro Boy definitely does that. References to movies like The Iron Giant are obvious, as well as to WALL-E, but the movie also has throwbacks to The Incredibles, Bolt, I, Robot (the “Robot Liberation Front” in Astro Boy lists off Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robots as the one thing preventing robot freedom), The Terminator, Artificial Intelligence,

Astro Boy: The Video Game.

and even zombie movies in general, when Astro Boy arrives on the earth’s surface – Metro City’s dump – and discovers it piled with mountains of walking dead robots. And if that’s not enough, Astro Boy also looks exactly like Mega Man. Didn’t see that one coming…

I don’t know that Astro Boy will be recognized at the Academy Awards this year, not the least reason for which is because it has such powerful competition, but I also understand that a lot of the show’s original fans are unimpressed with liberties taken with the source material. I can understand purists being unhappy about something like that, but as an animated film on its own Astro Boy is through the roof in the entertainment level, it’s got good action, good characters, good writing, excellent comic relief, and the lead character has machine guns installed in his butt, for crying out loud. I will say that the ending was just a little on the sappy side for my taste, but if you can watch this movie without having a great time, there may be a good possibility that you are an android…

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