They have lotions for that — Astroboy experiences a burning sensation
As the latest move in its cynical quest to appropriate, repackage and sell back the childhoods of audiences worldwide, Hollywood has seen fit to give Astroboy, the beloved manga comic book and anime by Osamu Tezuka (Buddha, Kimba the White Lion, Black Jack), a regurgi-glamour-Americanization treatment similar to those received by Speed Racer and Transformers. Credit where credit’s due, though. All of these films, despite their many flaws, have the right understanding of what they need to do to succeed: They must simultaneously appeal to their now-grown fans of yesteryear while also cultivating a new audience of young consumers. It testifies to the difficulty of finding this balance that Astroboy now joins the ever-growing heap of failed remakes and reimaginings.
At least, it’s a failure by one standard of measurement. Astroboy gives the impression that at one point it was a perfectly acceptable movie for kids, complete with riveting action, well-executed archetypes and an ending so obnoxiously happy that the only beat missing is a cripple flinging himself from his wheelchair and proclaiming that Astro’s (Freddie Highmore) heroic confrontation has somehow mended his shattered spine (and dreams).
At some point in the production, though, Astroboy’s crew took its simple, charming story of a robot boy who befriends a group of scrappy social outcasts and tries to mend their broken world through the power of goodness and friendship and injected some simplistic, embarrassingly dumb social commentary. Of course, social commentary was a part of Tezuka’s original too, but its handling here is so devoid of nuance that even those who agree with its general premise will be (or should be) ashamed of any similarities their own opinions have with the film’s. Astro’s villain is an obvious cartoon of George W. Bush (Donald Sutherland) who can’t get through a scene without telling us that he plans on starting a war with the aforementioned scrappy outcasts to try to win an upcoming election against a no-good hippy liberal. The story also concerns a new power source that somehow has both a good and an evil version. Only the good version is blue and the evil version is red. Get it?
The list of trite liberalisms goes on, and none are any more developed than the “Democrat good, Republican bad” message implied by the power source’s colour choice. The problem is, simplistic as these ideas are, most kids either won’t understand them or won’t care to try. So it stands to reason they’re in the film for the kids’ parents, who — if they have any sense — will be so sickened by their polemical inanity that they’ll prefer to spend the duration reading a magazine in the lobby.
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