nifty animated tale

Rating: Null/10 (19 March 2000)

A young boy, living in suburbia with his single-parent mother, befriends a friendly outer space alien he finds in a nearby forest and teaches him to communicate while hiding him from both his mother and the diabolical forces of the uncomprehending military industrial complex bent on the interloper's total annihilation.
Sound familiar? Say one thing for "The Iron Giant": if you have to model your tale on an earlier film, you could do a lot worse than Steven Spielberg's timeless masterpiece, "E.T. - the Extraterrestrial." The good news too is that, derivative as this new film is - it plays at times almost like a scene-by-scene remake of the previous film, - "The Iron Giant" is quite a charmer in its own right as well. It is a rare pleasure to see an animated film so rooted in the real world. So many of them take us to such exotic places - for the obvious reason that animated films, by their very nature simply CAN, - that all too often we feel distanced from what is taking place on the screen before us. By setting this film in the recognizable world of 1950's America, the makers establish a tone of unfrenetic charm and tranquility that plays well as a background for the sci-fi elements of the tale. The film also becomes a beautiful reflection on the strange coexistence of scientific idealism and trepidation that took hold of the imagination in that early era of space exploration and nuclear gamesmanship - an uneasy amalgam that found its way into many of the science fiction films of the time.
The dialogue in the film enhances the gentle tone of the story without resorting to either maudlin sentimentalilty or sardonic cynicism. Hogarth, the boy, is simply a curious, well intentioned young lad, a bit smarter than most perhaps but not a budding genius (one of the wittiest lines comes when he bemoans the fact that other boys tease him because he is so much smarter than them when really the only difference is that he STUDIES). "The Iron Giant" manages to instill a number of such subtle life lessons as these without straining the point or becoming pedantic about it - although the "guns kill" theme, obviously designed to infuriate NRA members, does come across as a bit heavyhanded.
The use of widescreen yields a number of tremendously beautiful moments of visual splendour, and the giant himself is especially impressive. Again, though, the animation is always placed at the service of the material; we are not subjected to a barrage of meaningless flashy images for their own sweet sake. "The Iron Giant" may feel overly familiar - and it will never replace "E.T." as the definitive version of this story - but it is definitely a film well worth seeing, an animated film that will indeed appeal to audiences of all ages.