Strange visitor from another studio this movie is sadly never going to get the attention it deserves. Iron Giant is the animated saga of a giant alien robot whose memory is damaged when he crash-lands near a small town in America during the hot part of the 1950�s Cold War. Befriended by a young boy and a local beatnik while being hunted by a paranoid government agent the Iron Giant learns about our world through observation, comic books and the trusting heart of a child. What Iron Giant has going for it is that it is an wonderful movie about friendship, trust, acceptance and learning to be who you want to be. The animation is terrific; so clean and basic you may not notice how good it is until you realize the facial expressions seem real or the backgrounds are so sharp. The humor runs from out and out belly laughs when the Iron Giant learns to dive at the local swimming hole to the more subtle when Special Agent Mansly seems to get a mocking look from a Goofy pot holder. The relationship between the young boy, Hogarth, and his giant metal friend could easily have become syrupy, but the movie avoids that by portraying Hogarth as a little boy; not a saint and the Iron Giant as just scary enough not to be sappy. And finally the movies other characters, like the time period they�re set in, are not deep nor complicated, but they still come across as real people with all the qualities, good and bad, but mostly good, that makes us all special. What Iron Giant has going against it is just one thing...it's an animated movie in a country where animated movies are regarded as 'childish'. Worse, Iron Giant is so unlike the usual fair of animated movies that I�m afraid it will slip almost unnoticed off the movie screen to the video market there to languish unknown to anyone not a science fiction fan or die hard animation enthusiast. After all, unlike Disney movies it doesn�t have a catchy soundtrack and the animation�s not flashy or gaudy enough to draw viewers on looks alone. It won�t attract adult movie goers because it lacks the sort of raunchy humor of more �adult� animated movies such as Wizards or The Nightmare Before Christmas. Very young children will go to see it, hand in hand with their parents, but only when there are no movies available with characters that are cuter and more recognizable to small children such as The Muppets or Rugrats. Older kids, pre-teens, will eschew it; girls because it has, ugh, a robot in it and boys because it�s, ugh, a cartoon. Sadly, had Iron Giant been made as a live action movie, with the proper special effects, people of all ages would probably be standing in line to see it and raving about it when it was over, but since Iron Giant�s �just� a cartoon and not a �real� movie, such as Inspector Gadget, Mystery Men or Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, this will never happen. And it�s a pity because those who don�t see this movie will never know just how good a film they are missing.
Average Grade: A+
