You should know that this movie is way way way for kids. Usually I watch movies that have the subtlety of a kicking mule and get really pissed at how ridiculous it is that so much simple crap is spelled out, but then I realized I wasn't watching a movie for a 25-year-old, I was watching a movie for an 8-year-old, and 8-year-olds are way dumber than me. So there! Seriously though, once I put myself in the "this isn't even remotely anything for me to enjoy" mode, I actually did rather enjoy it.

Astro Boy starts with tragedy as Dr. Tenma's (Nic Cage) son, Toby, gets totally effing disintegrated by the Peace Keeper robot and in his grief, Tenma decides to rebuild Toby straight up Fifth Element style by using one strand of his hair to transfer all of his memories (unlikely) into this new robot version of his son and then EXACTLY as in Fifth Element he simply runs him through a machine and BLAM-O there's fake skin and all except that instead of being a hot naked chick it's a 13-year-old boy in short shorts and thigh high red boots. Disappointing.

Tenma soon realizes that something isn't exactly Toby about his new son and decides that throwing him away is best for everyone so he lets the evil President Donald Sutherland try to take him away for his plan to start a war so he can get re-elected. Toby escapes down to the surface from the floating city where he lived and integrates himself with a group of robot loving humans who are more than happy to take him in. But when he finds out their adopted father, Hamegg, isn't quite who he says he is, Astro, the boy formerly known as Toby, decides to help keep the evil president from starting his war and thusly destroying the city.

So I went into this movie thinking that I'd rather be watching a movie about Mega Man, but I walked out of it really wanting to watch the adult version of the same movie, Ironman. There was even a scene where you could see Astro's chest glowing from his "blue energy" power source, which was just a dumbed down version of Tony Stark's "whatever-the-fuck-you-call-it" that he put in his own chest to keep himself alive. So there's two movies that Astro Boy rips off, and then throw into the mix the Robot Games, a tournament in which robots fight to the death. Or basically the movie Gladiator. Of course little kids will not have seen any of those movies, but to me they stuck out like a sore thumb.

I had a big issue with the Gladiator scene as it was entirely useless and clearly there to add a little more action into an already action packed movie. There would have been a big break if they hadn't included it, but it could have been a nice little character driven act had they not. Oh well, the scene was cool, just extraneous.

Let's talk about the evil President Stone. The George W. Bush jabs aren't so much subtly inserted into the script as they are relentlessly crammed down your throat with one of those pipes they used to pack muskets in the civil war. There's no getting around them. He's hapless and a war monger for the sole purpose of winning a war so he'll get re-elected, and his "shoot first, don't bother asking questions later" attitude is about as Bush as you can get without throwing big ears and a southern accent on him. But twice at the end of the movie he says, "I have an election to win" and I shit you not, this isn't because my mind currently lives in a refrigerator box in the lowest tier of the gutter,  but when he says that line, he says, "I have an ERECTION...to win" BOTH TIMES! No joke. If there had been a drink in my mouth I would have spit it everywhere the first time I heard it. But then I heard it again, and just laughed.

The very end is where the majority of my problems were. The first being that they seemed to be unable to resist bringing Jesus into it as ::SPOILER ALERT:: Astro is straight up resurrected after sacrificing himself to defeat the roboed out President Stone. He's lifted into the air by "the light", arms spread in all kinds of Jesus fashion, and then his heart lights up as he flickers back to life. ::FOGHORN SOUND!:: It's a kid's movie, they don't need shit like that forced down their throats. The other quick little problems were just a matter of convenience. Astro's new friend, the roboner inducing Cora (Kristin Bell) admits to him that her family is in the city she so condemns and in about as obvious a move as you can get she finds them at the end without any sort of effort whatsoever. Lastly, they set it up for a sequel simply by having a giant tentancle monster float in from outer space. But seeing as this movie isn't exactly cleaning up at the box office, I doubt we'll ever see that come to fruition.

I don't have anything glaringly positive to say about Astro Boy other than that as long as you pretend you're 8 then you can enjoy it. It's not overly funny, but the action and flashiness of it is fun to look at. Oh and by the way, Nic Cage's voice is just as shitty of an actor as Nic Cage in real life. Good animation, good story, good.

3 stars