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copyright
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Plot synopsis In a small town in Cold-war-era rural Maine, the residents can’t stop talking about the recent rash of unbelievable reports concerning a fisherman’s encounter with a metal man that fell from the sky, and cars with chunks bitten right out of them. Hogarth Hughes, the insatiably curious 9-year-old son of a hardworking single mom, discovers it's all true when he finds a gigantic iron robot in the forest, then follows him to the power plant. The robot’s got a fierce hunger for metal, but when he nearly electrocutes himself attempting to nosh on the power plant, Hogarth overcomes his fear and rushes forward to turn off the electricity, thus saving the Giant’s life. The experience forges a friendship between the mysterious robot and the boy. Hogarth finds the Giant a safe grazing ground – at a scrapyard run by a very cool, and kindhearted, beatnik junk artist – then teaches him English, and how to play. But when the military forces arrive in town to capture the robot, which they’re convinced is merely an enormous weapon of some sort, the threat triggers dangerous instincts in the Giant. As Hogarth tries to protect his friend, the Giant must come to terms with whether he’s the machine that he was created to be, or a living being with both free will and a soul. Review The best animated films – like classic picture books – are as entertaining for children as they are meaningful for adults, so it’s a mystery to me why the movie studios, or whoever the powers may be, continue to insist on marketing every animated feature as a kiddie flick. If it weren’t for the recommendation of my younger brother, who raved about how happy-sad this movie made him, you can bet I’d never have gone to the trouble of hunting down this rental (in fact, after looking in every imaginable section at my usual rental place, I discovered they didn’t have it on DVD and ended up having to go elsewhere – yes, I am now a DVD snob -- so it was rather a pain). The Iron Giant is a movie that anyone who loves a good simple story, well-told and lovingly-realized, will enjoy, even if you’re neither an 8-year-old nor the parent of an 8-year-old. It’s got the sweet, moral heart of a Disney movie without any of the cheesy crap – notably the unbearably mawkish singing scenes and cutesy sidekicks. The animation – largely hand-drawn the old-fashioned way, with the CGI-rendered robot blending in seamlessly -- perfectly evokes 1950s America, and some of the details that poke fun at that time period – like the scene in which Hogarth’s class watches a deadpan serious bomb paranoia piece masquerading as an educational film – are just plain hilarious. When it comes right down to it, though, The Iron Giant’s appeal is simple: its timeless story, loosely based upon a book by poet Ted Hughes, can make even the most cynical of us adults beam like a kid. — reviewed by Yee-Fan Sun
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flick pick |
The Iron Giant
1999