In the futuristic world of Metro City, a gleaming metropolis in the sky, the brilliant scientist Dr. Tenma creates Astro Boy to replace the son he has lost, programming his creation with the best of human characteristics and values, as well as endowing him with extraordinary super powers. Cast out when he cannot meet the grieving father’s expectations, Astro Boy is dealt a cruel double blow – he is also crushed to learn he is a robot, not even a human being.
Astro Boy, who carries within himself the Blue Core, a power source made of positive “blue” energy, is sought out by the troops of the militaristic President Stone, obsessed with obtaining the Core for the “Peacekeeper” robot, in fact invented to be used as a weapon to dominate Earth.
Last weekend we got to see a sneak preview of Astro Boy. Based on the cartoon, Astro Boy, the movie has a cast full of star voices, crazy cartoon action, and a combination of humor, sweet and sappy dialogue.
The premise is that Metro City has been built in the sky to get away from the Earth where polution has run wild. Donald Sutherland is the voice of President Stone, who is trying to get re-elected as president of Metro City. Metro City is kind of a utopia where robots do all of the work you don't want to -- garbage, cleaning, crime
fighting -- and you can just do whatever you want. Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) is responsible for all of the great robot technology.
Dr. Tenma tries to help out the President by using his robot technology mixed with the
power from a meteorite (the Blue Core) to build robot weapons. In a terrible mishap, the experiment goes wrong and Dr. Tenma's son, Toby, dies. To make up for his loss, Dr. Tenma builds a robot replica of his son, downloads his son's memory, and uses the Blue Core for power.
The movie then moves to how Toby figures out that he is a robot and not a little boy. Most importantly, he finds out that he can fly with jets in his shoes. But Dr. Tenma has misgivings about his new creation which causes Toby to run away from home. Consequently, he needs to escape President Stone's soldiers who want the Blue Core
technology. During the ensuing battle, Toby falls off of Metro City and onto Earth.
There on Earth, he is first befriended by a wayward gang of kids led by Cora (Kristen
Bell). But then he also makes friends with a robot revolutionary group who wants to free all of the robots. He tells them he is going undercover with the humans and goes
home with Cora. At Cora's home, he meets Hamegg (Nathan Lane) who has also been exiled from Metro City and is repairing robots. With this group he finds people that he really fits in with and cares about but feels bad that he hasn't been truthful about being a robot.
Of course, he is found out and we also find out that Hamegg is really repairing robots
to fight in a gladiator style sport called Robot Games. Astro Boy is forced to fight in the colliseum where he is re-discovered by President Stone. From here Astro Boy needs all of his robot genius and weaponry to beat robots in the ring, rescue Metro City from evil Red Core robots, smooth things over with his father, and win back his friends who are hurt that he lied to them.
Astro Boy has some great humor from Astro Boy as well as his butler robot (Eugene Levy) and the robot revolutionary group. There are some great lines and some great moments resurrecting robots back on earth with Cora and her friends, especially one giant lug named Zog. The action against huge evil robots is great and Astro Boy has fantastic gadgets like arm cannons and butt machine guns. At 90 minutes it is a good
length and moves pretty fast.
I would flag one warning. The movie is PG so for kids under 8 or 9 you may consider the movie's content. The little boy, Toby, does die at the beginning in kind of a violent accident. The robot Toby is then deactivated once and then actually commits suicide at another point in the story. He is always brought back but the smaller
children in the theatre were pretty confused.
Astro Boy is fun, funny, and a good movie, but I was surprised at some of the plot choices regarding Toby and his robot replica.
If I could give this movie a ZERO rating I would have. Absolutely hated it. The entire premise revolves around a child who dies in an accident, whose devastated scientist father creates a robot boy to replace him. The father soon realizes he can never replace his dead son with a robot so he throws the replicated child out into the cruel world. Are you kidding me? This is supposed to be a movie for little kids? This is supposed to be fun. The commercials emphasize Astro Boy saving the world with guns that shoot out of his butt - this is not representative of the film. Skip this movie. It's awful.
