Astro Boy
Hollywood lately seems to be on a roll avoiding any hint of originality. A couple years ago I looked ahead at upcoming film releases. About two-thirds of major releases appeared to be remakes, reboots or ripoffs of existing television or film franchises. Here, Summit Entertainment resurrects Osamu Tezuka’s classic Manga of the same title, first published in 1952. Inspired by Disney films of the 1930’s and 40’s, Tezuka created an iconic figure not unlike Mickey Mouse, complete with horn-like tufts of hair in place of Mickey’s large disk-shaped ears.
This computer-animated retelling resurrects the characters into a plot that seems too closely borrowed from Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence—kids won’t notice. Beset by the tragic loss of his son Toby (Freddie Highmore) in a robot experiment gone awry, Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) is determined to use an energy source known as “Blue Core” and, inexplicably retrieved memories from his son, along with a strand of hair containing Toby’s DNA, to create an artificial clone. To Dr. Tenma’s surprise, perhaps not ours, the android is not the same as Toby. Like David in A.I., the android is rejected and finds himself among the “bottom dwellers” in a scrap-heap on the surface below the hovering metropolis named—wait for it—Metro City.
Both Astroy Boy and A.I. rehash Disney’s classic animated film, itself a re-working of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (though Spielberg employs it as android mythology within his story). Yet, this adaptation of Tezuka’s characters and Spielberg’s plot has a hint of spirit of the Manga tradition. A nod nod to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics explains Toby’s motivation to help the bottom-dwellers.
While technically inferior to Hayao Miyazaki’s hand-drawn masterpieces, we find the protagonist encountering in his journey an odd gallery of characters at first wary but ultimately eager to help Astro Boy find his way. There’s also a hint of Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyberpunk, cult classic Akira. Zooming through the night skies of the post-apocalyptic city resurrects the stylized gloss of Otomo’s Neo-Tokyo. I was waiting for someone to shout out “Tetsuo…. Kaneda!” Alas, the target audience for Astro Boy wasn’t born until at least ten years after the release Otomo’s 1988 film.
Astro Boy will nonetheless entertain young kids, covering its bases with action sequences, explosions, giant robots destroying things, general mayhem with a little bit of social conscience mixed in and, of course, the tomboy, Cora (Kristen Bell), who falls for the hero.
Astro Boy • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 • Running Time: 94 minutes • MPAA Rating: PPG for some action and peril, and brief mild language. • Distributed by Summit Entertainment