Shiny, but not authentic. A little bit Pinocchio, a touch of Frankenstein, the one thing that Astro Boy seems to have left out of the mix is the feel of the source material -- the manga and anime character created five decades ago by Osamu Tezuka has gotten a glossy Hollywood makeover. While that's good news for Western youngsters new to Astro Boy, it's a bit of a letdown for fans of the original. All shiny CGI surfaces and modern post-Pixar animation, there's a nod to the Boy's retro roots in the design of Metro City, the floating metropolis where young Toby (voiced by Freddie Highmore) lives with his famous, aloof father, Dr. Tenma (Nicholas Cage). A robotics expert who has little time for his son, Dr. Tenma is devastated with Toby's killed in a lab accident -- so, like any mad scientist worth his salt, Dr. Tenma installs Toby's memories and personality in a state-of-the-art robot, but quickly discovers that Robot Toby is more of a reminder of the tragedy than an adequate replacement
Hey, it's another Joseph Campbell homage! Like the classic stories on which it’s obviously based, the tale explores what happens when a boy is rejected by the father who created him as Toby sets out to find where he fits in the world. Down on Earth's surface -- abandoned due to pollution, and now used as a gigantic garbage dump for the spic-and-span Metro City -- Toby meets up with a ragtag group of kids who live with the Fagin-like Hamegg (Nathan Lane), but he keeps his robot origins to himself. These characters, along with an amusing trio of Marxist revolutionary robots, are well drawn, complex and interesting. Less compelling is Metro City's re-election obsessed president (Donald Sutherland), an obvious, one-note, post-Bush villain who believes war and military might will be the key to keeping his job.
Enjoyable, but hardly memorable. Kids will like Astro Boy and adults won't find it painful to sit through, but it's unlikely to end up a classic that families will want to watch again. The animation itself is good but unspectacular, while the story is interesting enough to sustain its 94 minutes, but hardly fresh. It's adequate -- which makes it a little sad, after such a long history, that Astro Boy isn't better than it is. There was potential here to make an animated gem that would cap a 50-year career for a beloved character, and create a cartoon that would take its place on the DVD shelf beside modern classics like The Incredibles andWall-E. It's too bad that the filmmakers didn't aim higher.