Movie Reviews

The Iron Giant is my favourite animated movie. Unfortunately, not being computer-animated (it's mostly traditional 2D cell-drawings), and not being distributed by Disney, it didn't fare too well in theatres. That's too bad, because as good as most of Disney's animated films are, The Iron Giant is better than all of them (in fact, I'd bet Disney recognized how good it was, which prompted them to sign The Iron Giant's director Brad Bird on to create and direct Pixar's The Incredibles).

The story takes place in 1958 in a small town in Maine. Nine-year-old Hogarth Hughes (voiced by Eli Marienthal) lives with his single mom Annie (Jennifer Aniston), who works long hours at local diner. One night, while Hogarth is home alone, he ventures off into the woods around him home, in search of whatever it was that caused the interruption to his television reception (he was watching one of those wonderfully-awful 1950s b-movies). Sure enough, he stumbles across the "iron giant", a giant robotic metal man, and it's gotten itself entangled and electrocuted in a power transformer. When Hogarth saves its life by shutting off the power, the iron giant befriends Hogarth, and follows him home.

The only person that Hogarth shares his 'discovery' with is a local 'junk-artist-slash-early-hippie' named Dean (Harry Conick Jr.). Though Hogarth tries to keep his new friend a secret from everyone else, it's not surprising that a few other people happened to see the giant robot, and it's not long before a slimy CIA agent named Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) shows up to investigate; much to Hogarth's dismay, he ends up renting a room in the Hughes household.

Anyway, what comes out of this all is a sweet movie with a genuinely positive message. It turns out that there's a lot more to the iron giant's 'purpose' than Hogarth somewhat naively believes, but the giant develops a true sense of humanity through his friendship with the boy, which leads the film to a very dramatic and moving conclusion.

If you have any interest in animated films, please give The Iron Giant a chance, and don't pass over it just because it's not a Disney film. In fact, even you don't have much of an interest in animated films, I recommend you give this one a chance.