Film review: Astro Boy

Published on Thursday 4 February 2010 18:03

ASTRO BOY (PG) ** DIRECTED BY: DAVID BOWERS VOICES: NICOLAS CAGE, FREDDIE HIGHMORE, DONALD SUTHERLAND, SAMUEL L JACKSON

EVEN in CG-animated form, Nicolas Cage has ridiculous hair. Voicing the titular super-hero's father – a genius scientist with no time for his son – his stacked pompadour is just one of several strange things in this unintentionally oddball adaptation of the 1950s Japanese manga about a pint-sized, nuclear-powered superhero. When his obnoxious, precocious, smarty-pants son Toby (Freddie Highmore) is killed in a military experiment, Dr Tenma (Cage) decides to reconstruct him, Pinocchio-style , in robot form. Despite imbuing him with all his own memories, he soon realises his mistake: Toby 2.0 isn't the same as his real son – he's actually a lot nicer and sweeter – so he recoils in horror and leaves Toby to come to terms with the fact he's actually a machine. A.I.-style melancholy is quickly dispensed with, however, as Toby re-christens himself Astro, learns he can fly and realises he has machine guns in his posterior. The clashing tones and weird life lessons suggest Hollywood and Japanese culture make uneasy bedfellows, but it's probably distracting enough for the average seven-year-old.