A delightful surprise, this is one of the best animated films ever made and is as good as anything put out by the House of Mouse.

Rating: 9/10 (19 April 2003)

Warner Brothers' only previous half-way decent full-length animated film was [Space Jam - a animation / live-action mix that saw Warners' greatest stars (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc.) team up with the world's highest-paid sports superstar Michael Jordan to entertaining though easily criticisable effect. Aside from this their efforts have been somewhat useless. Content for a long time to release other peoples animated movies such as [Thumbelina] and [The Pebble and the Penguin] (go on, have you seen them?) they decided, on the strength of [Space Jam]'s success, to reopen their famous theatrical animation department in the hope that they could recreate the legendary success of their 50's short cartoons with full-length animated features. Their first effort, [The Magic Sword: Quest for Camelot], boasted as many words in the title as there were famous names in the voice cast but, sadly, boasted almost nothing else. Except that there were almost as many words in the title as there were people who went to the cinema to see it.
So, it is somewhat of a surprise to find Warner Brother's Feature Animation department releasing this upon an unsuspecting movie world, for this is the finest animated feature-length film to be released that has nothing to do with the mighty Disney studios (as of February 2000 and, it should be noted, that the key animators on this movie are all ex-Disney). Forget DreamWorks' glossy but botched [Prince of Egypt], forget Steven Spielberg's over-rated executive-produced [An American Tail], forget the excellent [Antz], forget even [Toy Story] and [Toy Story 2] (both co-financed and released by Disney anyway). The Iron Giant is cinema's finest non-Disney animated feature length film. It is a real shame that so few people saw it. Here's hoping that the home video market will discover this real gem.