"You came from the sky, right?"

Rating: 7/10 (25 April 2018)

With the story's setting in 1957, my best takeaway from the film was the nostalgia associated with the era's fascination with the threat of an atomic attack and it's attendant duck n' cover drills and underground shelters. The movie itself had the feel of one of those 1950's Warner Brothers cartoons and one of the principal characters, Dean the scrap metal guy, was even called a beatnik at one point. The kid Hogarth (I agree with Kent Mansley, who names their kid Hogarth?) enjoys Superman and sci-fi comic books and there's even a Maypo TV commercial thrown in for good measure. Yessiree, those were the good old days.
What's not so 1950-ish though is the representation of a family with no male figurehead, that's a decidedly modern day construct that probably began some time during the Eighties and continues today with all sorts of dysfunctional families. There's also the ever present anti-gun sentiment presented throughout, both subliminal and overt. I was kind of enjoying the picture until the liberal propaganda took on a get in-your-face message the way it did. Not to mention the portrayal of the FBI guy as a villain, though I'm sure there are some agents who would be as gung-ho as Mansley. But chloroforming the kid was taking it a step too far.
So with the competing forces at work here, I thought the picture just minimally passes the fun quotient. The Iron Giant itself had almost a creepy kind of ambience compared to most of the cutesy kind of characters you generally have in these animated features. At least he rises to the occasion to save the day for the citizens of Rockwell, that was a plus. But every time the Iron Giant ate something made of metal, and I know it's only a cartoon, I had to wonder - how does that work?