Nicely done.

Rating: 7/10 (8 September 2002)

Spoilers.
The Iron Giant is a very interesting movie from the opening scene to the final conflict. At first I was skeptical after seeing the strange character design and some childish events.
But I was impressed with some of the ideas presented in the movie. The Iron Giant, really a child at heart, is a pretty cool character. His CGI doesn't fit too well with the other animated scenery, but still interacts rather well.
What I didn't like about Iron Giant was some of the "perfect events" that seem to plague today's movies. For instance, a switch on a power plant to turn it on or off? Come on! And Hogarth's mother finds the flashlight within seconds of the power going off! I found things like these kind of annoying.
The final climactic moment seems a little out-of-place, since the movie was filled with heart all the way through. Then the end is filled with military bombardment and attacks, which I found strange. This action at the end is really cool, however, and I really liked it.
Also, I found the ending only partially satisfying. The movie breaks the traditional "happy ending" that American movies constantly have nowadays. The Giant's final sacrifice is amazing. Here he was, a defensive device with the ability to take out the world if necessary, yet he jumped skyward and into a massive missile to save the inhabitants of a small town. He isn't really killed, as we find in the end, but I kind of liked this, too, since at the beginning we found out that he was made to fall apart rather than shatter.
The plot and story are simple. Young boy finds giant robot, struggles to keep him out of sight. Which proves to be obviously difficult and leads to some hilarious twists and turns.
The Iron Giant is a really good movie, and I now have a little more respect for Warner Bros. They've got an adult mindset for a movie that could have been advertised for children. That seems to happen a lot now. And it's annoying. But Iron Giant didn't do this. It was advertised and made for everybody.