With the current releases of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Pixar’s Toy Story 3-D double feature you could assume that a major studio release of yet another CG-animated film would be a bad idea. If the quality could match either of those two releases one would be wrong. That Summit Entertainment has unleashed such a gross misappropriation of expectations would be an understatement.
David Bowers hails from the United Kingdom and in his first feature outing Flushed Away, made for Aardman Features and distributed domestically via Dreamworks, he managed to bring a British sensibility to a big studio production. As co-writer of that film and his newest offering Astro Boy, you can sense the tiniest inkling of his own brand of humor. A few off-color jokes and random acts of complete silliness are about all he manages to muster in what winds up being the biggest train wreck of a children’s script seen in years.
Having also worked on some excellent children’s animated films back in the day you would think Bowers could manage something on par with at least 20th Century Fox’s own Blue Sky which brought us the Ice Age series and Robots. Any of those are easier to sit through than Astro Boy. You also expect a lot more from a film when it is screened at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning, but I digress.
Bowers has worked on some high profile projects such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, We’re Back: A Dinosaur’s Story, along with Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. But apparently working alongside the likes of Robert Zemekis, Steven Spielberg, Simon Wells, and Nick Park has done nothing for his own work. Maybe Flushed Away was a complete fluke.
In Astro Boy, based on an original comic by Osamu Tezuka, we meet the young and supposedly brilliant Toby (voiced by Freddie Highmore). He is the son of Dr. Tenma (voiced by the insanely bored-sounding Nicolas Cage) who dies in a tragic accident while Dr. Tenma is testing out a new defense weapon for General Stone (voiced by Donald Sutherland). While Dr. Tenma doesn’t seem exactly all too upset over the death of his own son he does find time to clone him as a robot with superpowers now named Astro Boy.
All of this happens on the hovering-above-Earth Metro City. The floating city is designed to be a new metropolis as their garbage, consisting mostly of destroyed robots, is dumped down to the real Earth below. When Dr. Tenma decides that Astro Boy is ultimately not his son and tries to banish him to the ground below, Astro Boy discovers his superpowers but not before he still gets grounded to the wastelands.
Article comments
1 - Respected Movie Critic
WHO THE HELL WROTE THIS REVIEW, ITS UTTER CRAP. The facts are wrong and you even managed to screw up the plot; "Tenma decides that Astro Boy is ultimately not his son and tries to banish him to the ground below" did you actually fall asleep during the movie and miss the scene where he is chased by the army, who force him to go to the surface?
this is a GOOD movie and whoever wrote this review is a douche!
2 - Cinenerd
Anyone who DOESN'T fall asleep during this movie is the general movie going public I was speaking about in my review. And so much for personal attacks huh? Man some people need to grow up and realize that a review is a personal opinion. You made yours in the first paragraph and there was no need to call me a "douche." Glad at least YOU find yourself "respected."
3 - Nick
Haha. Love your tagline for your article. "AstroTurd!"
4 - El Bicho
"you could assume that a major studio release of yet another CG-animated film would be a bad idea."
why is that?
Why would you sit through an out-of-focus film? Apparently Nick is part of your "movie-going public" since he loves "AstroTurd".
5 - Respected Movie Critic
Okay, i admit i went a bit over the top (needed to vent off a little steam) but i still think you should get your facts straight before writing a review for everyone to read.
6 - Cinenerd
It was a press screening and there was no option other than to pay to see it later and there's no way I would ever have done that.
And it wouldn't be a review unless the whole film was watched, right? RMC - that paragraph was a summation of events. I get too caught up in the synopsis at times and wanted to truncate the events in a paraphrased form.
As for Nick, he is thankfully the exact opposite of the general movie-going public since he loved that I called it "Astro Turd."
7 - ROSARITO BANDITO
Personal attacks aside, I for one value Cinenerds reviews and wait with baited breath for his next shining or shameless review of what has become of classic Hollywood!
8 - doug m
Nice of cinenerd's mom to stop by
9 - Cinenerd
My mom would never be able to figure this site out :)
10 - Dan Rush
I've been a fan of Astro Boy and Anime for 40 years and I could have written a better fan fiction than this crap of a script.
11 - sarina
i borrowed the movie from my friend and my sister played a trick on me and i missed the part when cora was i think calling her parents and i had to give the movie back, that one part was in spanish THAT SUCKED!!!