The robot boy who lived...

Astroboy - David Bowers

One of the most famous and prolific animated characters has had a recent outing, being updated for the American audiences, for people who don’t know the name or who he is. This character, originated in Asia, stared in many video games, television shows, films, graphic novels, comic books, novels, and shitloads of stuff really. His name is Astroboy. A robotic boy made by his inventor father after the real boy dies. He’s a culture figure in Asia, and to the masses of fans of anime and following the cultural figures from cartoons, but as fallen out of the limelight in the Western world. Ask a person who Astroboy is, chances are, they either know of the name or know what he looks like or sometimes people just won’t know. They know more about Snooki then they know about Astroboy.

Any who, the story follows a famous inventor, here voiced by the strangely good Nicolas Cage, or Nic Cage, which sounds fifty times cooler. He is a famous inventor who helps in building robots and creates the future of society, where they are living on a large piece of land which is floating in the sky, covered in technology advancements and helpful robots, he has a son, who he loves, he accident is killed, and a robotic version is created using a piece of pure ultimate good energy, creating the strongest, the fastest and the smartest robot ever, being able to think like a regular human and fit into society easily. But as he learns to find out he is a robot, he begins to experience problems with fitting in, especially his father who cannot accept himself for what he has done to his original son. Through in a political struggle between the current major and the inventor, a fight ensues over the created ultimate good energy, along with the invented ultimate bad energy. Yes, it sounds very cheesy, but it’s a kid’s film, come on.

Overall, for a CGI film, its good, it has some parts that bore you and have no action, to parts that are explosive and defiantly going in the right direction. But as a whole, the film lacks the Pixar quality for it to be taken seriously as a great animation film. Unfortunately because of how great Pixar is, all animated films are compared to them, it should be the level of all quality, which Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation company always seems to compete with, and Astroboy falters. Even Wallace and Gromit matched up to the standards...

5/10

Simon Childs