Astro Boy Movie Review

Astro Boy was released to the movie theaters today and I meant to post my movie review before the movie came out. OOPS.

I recommend that if you are a mother like me that wears her heart on her sleeve at all times that you know the premise of the movie before you watch it. Otherwise within the first 10 minutes of the movie you are going to be in tears and utterly depressed for the first half of the movie.

So Astro Boy is a robot, he is the perfect robot run on purely good unending energy. He came into being because Dr. Tenma lost his son Toby in a robot testing experiment. His grief led him to try to make the perfect replacement and he didn’t realize that it was a success because he didn’t really know his son. So he tells the robot you aren’t my son. It broke his heart because as far as he knew he was Toby. I was bawling, for a few reasons.

One, my children were in the other room and I am hardly ever without them. Two, I imagined the loss of my child and knew how crazy I would go. Thirdly, I could imagine how hurt and alone Toby/Astro Boy felt. It was funny because my husband and I were sitting next to each other like we were on a date that we haven’t been on in almost three years. My husband became very concerned about my reaction to the movie and told me I could go check on the kids if I needed to.

I didn’t and the movie changed in spirit a bit as Astro had to go out in the world and find himself. Who is he and what all can he do with his new found abilities. He finds himself an outcast on the planet below Metro City where he was created and makes some friends who don’t like robots. He keeps the fact that he is a robot to himself and later finds himself alone again. He then sees his creator again and after an exchange of words, Dr. Tenma realized he made a mistake in sending Toby away like that. From there he has to fight the President and the rest of the story reaches it’s climax. This is when I had to leave.

It was a good clean movie. There is no language or inappropriate anecdotes. Once I got over the initial pain and darkness I found myself laughing at the humor. Later in the movie my children joined us and just as the climax of the movie started I had to leave because the scary robot scared my daughter and I didn’t want her to have nightmares just so I could finish a movie.

My husband is impressed because it is a family movie, not created by Disney or Pixar (I know they are the same thing now) and excellent for families.