The Iron Giant

“The Iron Giant” is a different kind of kid’s movie. There are no sarcastic, crazy, attention deficit sidekicks. (This alone sets it apart from most Disney fare.) The animation is simple and straightforward, and has a classic feel to it — no CGI here. Instead of these things, it makes extra investments in heart, tenderness, and gentle humor.

The story is very much like E.T., only this time E.T. is a 100 foot tall killing machine, witha soft heart. There were a lot of movies from the 80’s that wanted to be like E.T., but fell short. They got the boy-meets-cute-alien part right, but missed out on everything that makes that movie such a classic — the heart, the humour, the parallel between a lost alien and a lost little boy. The Iron Giant gets these things right; our hero, 10 year old Hogarth Hughes, is such a delightful, imaginative, energetic little boy that I would watch a movie about him doing, well, pretty much nothing. He’s that much fun to watch.

[YouTube=http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b253/thisglimpse/irongiant.jpg]

The movie is set in the Cold War ‘50s. The antagonist is a self-important government agent whose fallback stance is that if we didn’t build it, we should destroy it. The director (Brad Bird, who earned his wings on “The Simpsons,” but would go on to make “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille”) evokes the time period with loving, almost obsessive detail, and it’s this passion that gives “Iron Giant” its special feel.

This is, essentially a story about a boy and his robot, and the villian who wants to separate the two, but good work is given to Hogarth’s mother, and especially to a guy named Dean. Dean is a hipster before there were hippies, and makes art out of junk, or at least tries to. When an old man in a cafe is laughed at by his buddies because he claims to have seen something fall from the sky, Dean says he saw it too, even though he didn’t. Because that’s just the kind of guy he is. His junkyard is the perfect hiding place for the Giant, because one man’s junk is another robot’s food.

The anti-war, anti-gun message is pretty heavy handed, but that can be forgiven, because this is a kid’s movie, after all. It’s one I’m glad I got a chance to see, one I look forward to seeing again, and one I’ll save for my own kids, so they don’t have to watch tripe like “Pocahontas” or “Hercules.”

Recommended

• for the kid in everyone.
• if you think Disney’s gotten awfully formulaic of late, in more ways than one.
• if you want to teach your kids about the Cold War ‘50s, or guns, or war.

Not Recommended

• if you’ll feel irritated by the blatant “guns are bad” motif.
• if you’re excited about all the current animated movies that push the envelope of what can be done.
• if you didn’t like E.T., in the first place.