Review of The Iron Giant (1999) by Flipje — 12 Oct 2019

While the film has its merits, I found the familiar tropes to be somewhat bothersome. The setting, the time period provide a nice backdrop for the story of a metal ET crash landing on earth. We have the Americana version of Maine during the Cold War and a young boy, Hogarth who is basically your everyman as a child.

He is precocious and adventerous. He owns a BB gun, he loves his comic books and wants to have a wild animal for a pet. His mother is your typical single mom... or rather a widow (it was not well-established how she lost her husband and I only discovered this after referring to the Wikipedia site) and works at a diner.

She is patient, long-suffering with her child's antics and his many other quirks which altogether come out of the stereotypical screenplay bag of basic ideas here. Into Hogarth's life comes this Iron Giant and from there, it plays out like ET.

I know this is a kid's movie yet after hearing and reading the great reviews, I found myself wondering how this film could belong to numerous top ten film lists. I kept forcing myself to keep watching, expecting some depth or revelation.

Yet Hogarth, his mom, and Dean, an artist who owns a scrapyard were all poorly written characters. The bad guy was boring and idiotic. The climax was overblown and ludicrous. The whole plot offered nothing new.

The dialogue felt clumsy and trite. A pleasant film and I suppose great for children. Weapons are bad. Killing is bad. Yes, wonderful moral messages here along with the idea that we choose to be what we want to be.

The film just felt bland and boring, more a chore to watch. There are far better animated films out there. I urge people not to believe the hype. Brad Bird directed this work and it is definitely a first film for him.

I recommend The Incredibles which is much more mature and a far better film. It was more well-thought out than this piece of juvenelia. This felt like a sketch that needed more attention to detail. I truly don't understand the rave reviews.

Sometimes I think the herd mentality is at work in movie criticism.