Forgotten Jewel

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2011)

A 2-D animation movie with a great script, characters and old-style animation.
The Iron Giant tells the story of the fall into Earth of an alien giant robot, and his relation with a naughty child who lives with his single mother in a small town in the States.
The movie is set in the 1950s, during the cold war period and the space race, when aliens and robot populated TV shows and comics, and the imagination of the population. The movie is able to reproduce the mood and style of the era, even the animation style, but with all the improvements that technology has brought to animation.
The characters are psychologically drawn with great talent, as it couldn't be otherwise by a Warner Bros's movie, and it is just them, their human qualities, what makes the viewer click with them and believe they are real. Moreover, the cartoons have a superb body movement, facial expression.
The script is engaging and very entertaining, very funny and lovable. At the same time, the film address serious social and political issues in a simple approachable way, without lecturing: You are who you decide to be, if you respond to violence is your option., it is in your hands to make your own destiny no matter what your past is, your heart is always a great power to connect with others, no matter how different they are. Great messages to pass on to children.
Eli Marienthal is terrific as the little hero Hogarth Hughes. Jennifer Aniston is extremely lovable as his mother Annie (perhaps Aniston's best performance ever...),.Harry Connick Jr is very likable as the quirky Dean McCoppin, Vin Diesel very sweet as the "brute" Iron Giant, and Christopher McDonald terrific as the annoying paranoid Govt Agent Kent Mansley. In fact all the voice actors are terrific, and the movie is never dull, but cheerful and full of life thanks to them.
The Iron Giant did not have success at the box office when first released, due to poor marketing and a lack of promotion, but it has proved to be one of the most charming, entertaining and lovable animation movies of all times, to be put together with Miyazaki's and other classics of animation because of the quality of its animation and story.
A classic for both children and adults