4 gibbles out of 5

Director: Brad Bird

Iron Giant exists in that sort of crossover moment for cartoons where technology was becoming available for CGI blending and animated-film-watching kids were becoming more aware of top ten hits and celebrity statuses.  Because of this it has an odd aura around it, one that’s definitely reminiscent of a past era – also thanks to its setting in the 50s – and one that brings to mind older Disney epics, all without seeming dated.  This is largely due to the intelligent scripting, which wholly respects its audience’s intelligence, as do the best cartoons, and advantageously uses the medium to create some scenes of great awe, the kind of stuff that would become much easier with the coming era of computer animated films.

Hogarth lives a simple life with his single mother.  He’s a happy kid, but lonely, lacking in playmates to whom he feels he can relate.  …Until he stumbles across a 50-foot tall robot in the woods, which takes to him like a lost puppy.  There aren’t too many surprising twists and turns to the over-arching plot – Hogarth learns some valuable lessons by the tale’s end – but it’s the little details (which director Brad Bird’s films are good at spreading around to enrich the story) that make it effective.  The spread of characters are all pretty well-rounded, even if they do play specific good / evil roles – Jennifer Aniston voicing Hogarth’s mom, Harry Connick, Jr. as a beatnik who befriends Hogarth, Christopher McDonald as a government agent tracking down the robot, believing it to be a Russian weapon – but instead of being 100% wholesome, or silly, or glowering, they’re all given moments of interaction with Hogarth or with each other that make them recognizable personalities beyond the names voicing their characters.

The film’s pacing is also respectable in this sense, taking time to build its story instead of spraying us with robot special effects.  The Iron Giant does show up early, but Hogarth’s decision to care for the robot (and hide him from the goverment) is given weight by this first half of the film.  But the most impactful aspect of the movie is its sense of within-frame scale.  The Giant does seem like a giant.  This is smartly kept low-key at first by having the robot bend down to Hogarth’s height or sitting down, but every time the robot stands and the camera swoops up to give us an indication of its height, you really feel it, thus increasing the wish-fulfillment aspect of this to a T.

Iron Giant’s appeal might be more narrow than Brad Bird’s later films, however.  Hogarth’s mother is really the only female in the movie, and the whole sci-fi bent to it does make it feel like a boy’s film.  That pacing I mention, which was truly effective watching the movie as an adult, would, I wonder, probably seem slow to a kid.  Our robot doesn’t get up to much action until the last portion of the film, the movie otherwise using period jazz or time-appropriate sounding score to move scenes along.  If a kid is hooked by spotting the robot crashing to earth in the first scene, I imagine they’ll be along for the ride.  Otherwise they’ll probably be asking for a bit more action.

And, lastly, all disbelief suspended, within the movie’s logic it still seems odd that no one else spotted a 50-foot tall robot walking around on the outskirts of town.