A breath of fresh air.

Rating: Null/10 (19 August 2014)

'The Iron Giant' is a breath of fresh air. At one point while viewing it I whispered to my friend seated next to me 'I am REALLY enjoying this'. The reason behind that statement is that most animated films these days seem to have been made with great skill and take us to places we could only imagine but their stories fall like a stone I have not been impressed by many of Disney's latest forays sans the 'Toy Story' movies and the breathtaking 'Hunchback of Notre Dame'. 'The Iron Giant' is not a Disney film but they could take a lesson from it. Here is a charming film that strips away the usual pretenses of animated features and flat out tells a good story.
The story begins in October 1957, the night the whole world has its eyes open for Sputnik orbiting overhead. Out of the sky comes an alien from another world. A 100-foot metal-munching behemoth that is first seen eating straps of metal and eventually eats his way to the local the power plant.
One of the pieces is a TV antenna belonging to Hogarth, a little boy living in a big house with his single mom. Just like the boy in another movie about a creature from space, he goes to investigate. He saves the giant from munching on power-lines and the two become friends.
Naturally, Hogarth has to keep this enormous creature a secret from his mother and eventually from the government agents who come looking for it. What I appreciated most about 'The Iron Giant' was the care given to the smaller moments.
Consider a scene in which the creature's hand comes off and runs around the house while Hogarth tries to keep his mother from seeing it. He opens the bathroom door and there is the hand stumbling around like a puppy with its wires wagging like a tail. Those are the kind of moments that fill the screen in 'The Iron Giant'. They aren't necessary to the story but I appreciate the efforts of the animators to take that extra step.
The characters are fun too. Besides Horgarth there is a beatnik named Dean (Given a very daddy-o by Harry Connick Jr.) a dim-bulbed federal agent (Chris McDonald) and Hogarth's mother who isn't given the stereo-typical 'Go to your room' sternness but comes off as a woman genuinely concerned about her son.
But I am forgetting the star of the show. The Iron Giant himself begins as a creature who doesn't understand the world that he had dropped into gradually gathers an understanding of love and friendship from Hogarth. He begins as a metal-munching monster and then understands humanity.
He makes mistakes as in one thrilling scene in which he bends a railroad track just as the train approaches. He doesn't speak for most of the movie but when he does it is in a very low monotone with selective words. I also loved the look of the creature, his steam-shovel mouth and brawny frame look as if he has stepped right off the covers of those old science fiction magazines.
I loved the Iron Giant for so many reasons. This is a movie trying to be different. It doesn't try to be a carbon copy of a Disney film. Dancing dishes and furry sidekicks are fine but personally I liked a movie like this, a movie with its feet on the ground and its heart – as well as its script – in the right place.