‘Astro Boy’ really soars

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“Astro Boy” is one of those happy moviegoing surprises.

What could have been another recycled property dumped into the crowded computer-animation marketplace emerges as a smart and spry family film that is funny in many unexpected ways. You don’t usually find comic references to Lenin and Trotsky in a kids’ movie.

On the surface, “Astro Boy” follows Hollywood’s obsession with reviving 1960s TV characters regardless of how many people actually remember them. In 1963 “Astro Boy” was the first Japanese cartoon imported to America, but he had only a cult following even then.

If Astro Boy is obscure in America, he is an icon in his native land. With those twin spikes of hair, Astro Boy’s silhouette is as recognizable in Japan as Mickey Mouse’s two circular ears are America. The character was created for comic books in 1951 by manga legend Osamu Tezuka.

Purists may complain that the movie departs from Tezuka’s text as it reconfigures Astro Boy’s origin. Those changes came as a relief to me, though, because until now the Astro Boy character creeped me out. In a combination of the Frankenstein and Pinocchio stories, scientist Dr. Tenma creates Astro Boy as a robot duplicate to replace his dead son. Tenma soon rejects the robot boy, and a more kindly scientist adopts him.

Several disturbing themes lurk in that brief description, but the comic strip and 1960s cartoon shrugged them off as soon as they were raised. At the very least, a robot programmed to think it is human will have identity problems. The new movie does address this, along with the corresponding themes of loss and abandonment, though not in dire terms. This Astro Boy is like a kiddie version of Data from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

The film takes place in a supposed utopia called Metro City, which floats above the earth in the fine science-fiction tradition of flying cities. In another such tradition, mankind lives a leisurely existence served by robots. Citizens dump their trash, including outdated robots, over the side, not caring what it does to the world below.

Dr. Tenma’s son died in a car accident in the original story, but here the boy, renamed Toby and voiced by Freddie Highmore, gets vaporized while his father tests a robotic super weapon. When he “rebuilds” his son, Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) gives Toby 2.0 an array of defensive weapons plus built-in jets so that this child will never be hurt. Metro City’s paranoid ruler, Gen. Stone (Donald Sutherland), considers Astro Boy a rogue weapon and orders his destruction.

One big action scene later, Astro Boy tumbles to the underworld, which is when the movie really clicks. He falls in with a group of orphans who do the bidding of a disgraced robot repairman, Hammegg (Nathan Lane). Yes, the plot has just morphed into “Oliver Twist,” but it works. The Artful Dodger equivalent is Cora (Kristen Bell), Astro’s kinda-sorta romantic interest.

While Cora’s gang accepts Astro as a real boy, robots recognize his true nature. A motley threesome calling themselves the Robot Revolutionary Front try to recruit him to overthrow their oppressive capitalist masters, the humans. This is where the Lenin jokes come in.

Director David Bowers collaborated on the script with Timothy Harris. Bowers is a veteran animator who has worked in Britain’s Aardman Studios (home to Wallace and Grommit) and once applied ink and paint to another cult cartoon hero, Danger Mouse. That alone explains the subversive humor that slips effortlessly into “Astro Boy.”

With Gen. Stone’s drive to build the ultimate robot weapon, “Astro Boy” takes welcome shots at the “Transformers” movies and their militaristic view. While “Astro Boy” repeats themes found in two superior cartoon robots movies, “The Iron Giant” (pacifism) and “Wall•E” (conservation), “Astro Boy” is too bright and hip to hammer its messages.

The movie looks slick and the action sequences are exciting, but the animation lags about five years behind Pixar’s expertise. The filmmakers also make the mistake of hiring celebrity voices for their marquee value. Cage says his lines with the emotional conviction of a man reading the ingredients off a laxative label, and Bell sounds like a generic teenage girl. However, Highmore (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) does a fine job relaying the main character’s exhilaration as well as his emotional turmoil.

“Astro Boy” was not designed to be anything more than a second-tier computer-animated feature, but B-movies can overcome their pedigree with the right creative team. Bowers supplies just enough heart and more than enough humor to make “Astro Boy” an agreeable entertainment.

Even its deficiencies become blessings. “Astro Boy” is the only computer-animated film of 2009 not presented in 3D. After 10 months of monsters, aliens and meatballs thrust into our faces, a robot boy who stays on the screen is a relief.

3 stars
Rated: PG for some action and peril and brief mild language
Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Written by Timothy Harris and David Bowers
Directed by David Bowers
Starring (the voices of) Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Donald Sutherland