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'Astro Boy:' lots of swoosh and spectacle

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By NEIL POND

American Profile

Published: November 6, 2009

Look! Up in the air! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a movie based on a 1950s Japanese comic book that later became an international TV cartoon!

Now zipping onto the big screen, "Astro Boy" is the futuristic tale of a robotic youngster with some pretty impressive superpowers, including rocket-powered feet, x-ray vision and the ability to take quite a lickin' and still keep on tickin'.

In the new computer-animated movie, we learn how Astro Boy came to be — and about a childhood tragically lost in the process. We watch as the young hero tries out his new tricks, putting him on a collision course with a corrupt military general and a gigantic, destructive cyborg dubbed (ironically) "Peacekeeper."

Freddie Highmore, who played Charlie in 2005's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," provides the voice of Astro Boy, and Kristen Bell (from the recent live-action hit comedy "Couple's Retreat" and TV's "Gossip Girl") speaks for Cora, a spunky young female who befriends him after he crash-lands in a junkyard fiefdom ruled by a flamboyant robot tinkerer (Nathan Lane).

Donald Sutherland has a hammy turn as hawkish Gen. Stone, but Nicholas Cage sounds like he's sleepwalking through his lines as AB's conflicted scientist father. Wake up, Nic, and earn that paycheck!

This is a movie straight-down-the-middle for kids, with lots of swoosh and spectacle.

As is the case with most movies made for younger audiences, the filmmakers throw in a handful of gags meant to make grownups smile — like a robot's face-monitor status display that transitions from "! ! !" (alarmed) to "RELEASING FLUIDS" (very alarmed).

After its run as a comic book, a TV series and a videogame, there's just not a lot of new, unturned ground left for "Astro Boy" to explore. It looks sleek and snazzy, but everything here seems recycled. There's not really a novel idea to be found in the stitched-together storyline, a hodgepodge of pop-cultural references to Pinocchio, Frankenstein, Superman, the Jetsons, Daredevil, "The Iron Giant," "District 9" and "Wall-E." Oliver Twist-like street urchins scavenge the junkyard where Astro becomes marooned, and he's forced to fight other robots in a scene that borrows heavily from "Gladiator."

So "Astro Boy" doesn't have much going for it in the realm of originality. But you have to give it credit for its positive messages of sacrifice, courage and loyalty, and its depiction of a character to which a lot of children can relate. Astro isn't sure of who, or what, he really is. He feels rejected by his father and unable to confide in his friends. And he ultimately makes a decision in which greater good outweighs his own outcome.

He may be a reconstituted robot, but this little cyber-kid's got some real heart.

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