The Iron Giant 1999
A cartoon based on a cold war/atomic cafe era kid’s book. For kids watching this I think they will miss much of the historical context and maybe won’t even be able to relate to the tension of a time when the world was constantly an hour away from total annihilation. Thus the red scare, Sputnik, and the horror of unleashing atomic weapons will probably be lost on them. But this is still a great movie for any kid to see with a parent. And it isn’t half bad for grown-ups either. Though the message is fairly basic it’s nice to have a simple movie and can be viewed as a modern fable.
The movie centers around the child of a single mother who befriends a 100-foot tall robot from outer space. Though, of course, the robot is gentle, it is perceived as a threat by the government and army who are out to destroy it. The scenes of the kid and robot discovering things about one another are fun: what kid wouldn’t want to have a friend who can uproot trees and throw cars like they were footballs? I don’t know how closely the book was followed but I thought all of this was well done. It would have been easy to take this material and make something humdrum and blunt, but the action and imagination keeps it from getting tiresome. This movie shows that Disney certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on entertaining feature length cartoons.
B+
Written: 15 Jan 2000
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital