#57: Astro Boy (2009)

My name is Ed and I going to win the lottery by watching films with Nicolas Cage in them. I am. I just am, alright?

After G-Force, Astro Boy makes two animated versions of Nicolas Cage in one week! And this time he’s playing a human man instead of a mole — the father of fun future science teen Toby Tenma, who is gosh-gee-shucks going to have some fun in the floating sci-fi city he calls home. That is, until he is vaporised by a death machine about fifteen minutes into the film for children.

Astro Boy is based on a Japanese comic from the ’50s which apparently followed the same basic premise (although the fatal incident was a car crash): the grief-stricken father builds a super-powered robotic version of his son, then rejects him for not actually being his son. This is basically Pinocchio retold by Black Mirror and as such is kind of awful and upsetting?

But when rejected Astro Boy finds himself binned off in the robot graveyard that lies underneath the sky city, the film suddenly becomes a genuinely funny comedy. The highlight is Astro’s encounter with the Robot Revolutionary Front, a gang of robots and a fridge determined to free their enslaved electronic brothers but unable to take any action due to the Asimov-style laws of robotics imprinted on their brains: they have to resort to threatening to tickle people. There’s a lot of nice business here, ably voiced by Matt Lucas and Bill Nighy (not doing an awful Australian accent, praise be) with director David Bowers as the fridge.

(Fans of arbitrary biographical information may wish to note that David Bowers started his career animating episodes of Dangermouse and Count Duckula — he also worked on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. What I’m saying is: I’ve learned these things on Wikipedia and I am going to show off as though that is in any way impressive.)

This whole middle section, which sees Astro join a scavenging gang of kids led by robot repairman Hamegg, feels like it’s from a completely different, punched up, version of the script. But like all good and nice things, this cannot last. The final act is mostly dreary fights with robots and vaguely insulting plot logic about magical blue things and magical red things.

A serious Cageologist might wish to compare and contrast his roles in this and the previous entry’s subject, G-Force. While, in theory, grieving father Dr Tenma might seem to be a slightly meatier part than a comedically murderous mole, in practice Cage does a lot less here — possibly because the role is too straightforward, too defined on the page — whereas in G-Force someone’s clearly just told him to go for it. What I’m saying is that those snobs at the Academy need to have a word with themselves: Speckles the mole should have won Cage his second Oscar.

THE NUMBERS

3 — When the robot revolutionaries are called ‘to arms’, one of them objects that he has three arms.
10 — Astro is warned that you need ten sets of eyes in Hamegg’s den.
13 — Murdered child Toby was 13 years old.
24 — Hamegg’s robot repair service is open 24 hours a day, according to a poster.
45 — When Astro Boy first discover he can fly he gets caught by a speed camera, at Mile Post 45, according to the photo.
52 — The original Astro Boy comic was published in 1952. Heard your boyfriend’s annoyed that I’m not calling it a manga.

THE RESULT

0 numbers. I take it back, I am glad that kid died.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

The Bad Lieutenant

(Port Of Call New Orleans)