An adventure film with a message

Rating: Null/10 (21 August 1999)

"The Iron Giant" is a wondrous family movie. It's animated but not a child's cartoon. This is an "ET"-style fantasy in which a young boy befriends a giant robot from outer space and teaches him about life among us humans. Young Hogarth Hughes works to keep his over-size buddy from being discovered by his loving Mom and the US government. The movie is set in 1957 Maine, and it nicely evokes the paranoid atmosphere of the cold war era. People assume the robot is a secret weapon of the commies, but in the end the giant saves us all from nuclear disaster. The animation is clean and lively. The giant moves with a mechanical fluidity thanks to computers, giving it a different look versus the hand-drawn human characters. The director of this film is a former producer/writer on "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill," but here he refrains from the biting cynicism of those shows without crossing over into the sentimentality of most Disney movies. There are no cute animal sidekicks, no musical numbers, no happily ever after. But "The Iron Giant" is a smart, sweet must-see for animation fans of all ages.