I Am Not a Gun. I Am Superman!

Rating: Null/10 (8 August 2008)

Actually just today I finally watched this picture so I actually watched first The Incredibles and Ratatouille, of course both directed by Brad Bird too. I liked this one more than Ratatouille and probably as much as The Incredibles. It has a story based on the friendship and that story is pretty known, this time the background is great so that "basic" story works in a perfect way. Everything happens in 1957 and as you know everything turns around that Iron Giant (voice of Vin Diesel). The human protagonist is a kid, Hogarth Hughes (voice of Eli Marienthal), who is influenced by science fiction movies and comic book stories -and MAD magazine- and who is going to have the first real contact with the Iron Giant, when he was already the theme in the conversations of the people in the town. The mother of Hogarth (voice of Jennifer Aniston) is use to hear him talking about those stories so when he talks about an Iron Giant she is not very surprised. It is a story of friendship first so the robot is practically a little kid, a really unique one, since he is learning everything, showing enthusiasm on that but of course you can't just make your friend a giant robot who needs metal as food and thinks that he just can remove a train track any time he is hungry (look at the character who was on that train, he looks a little similar to Marty Scorsese!). That's a truly big problem and of course Hogarth will have some problems if his mom or any other person meet his new friend but of course he will find some good people that will understand the robot, of course once they are calm after the obvious shock for meeting the Iron Giant. Actually he will only meet one person and his name is Dean (voice of Harry Connick, Jr.) and he is a really cool character, the opposite of Kent Mansley (voice of Christopher McDonald) who is the classic investigator of a mysterious and ridiculous case that first is making fun of it but once he is affected in a direct way the robot will be no more a joke and it will be a true objective as a product of the paranoia. At this point the Iron Giant turns to be a King Kong and since I haven't meet a person who feels good by watching the end of Kong here nobody will be with the army and here our Giant turns to be a real amazing robot that by then has already the S on his chest - A really great character that delivers even really hilarious moments.
The voices are simply good. Is easy to recognize the voice of Jennifer Aniston here but is not the voice of Vin Diesel. For me is still strange to see him in the cast. I really dislike his performances. Anyway, the animation is really terrific and in the end this is a magnificent picture with great and very likable characters. I promise you that your family will love it and with its story it won't be a surprise if your girlfriend cries near the end, believe me. In short, The Iron Giant is one of the best films of 1999.
PS: reading some comments for this film I found specially one that gained my attention. On that comment one of the things against this film is that it is "anti-gun", "anti-hunting", etc. In my opinion you don't need s*** like guns. I loved this film!!!!!!