Review of The Iron Giant (1999) by Edith N — 07 Jul 2013

Cold War Paranoia For Children.

You know how, sometimes, you've been meaning to get to something for just years and you don't? Not for any good reason, mind. Not because you're dreading it. Just because you mean to and somehow don't. This isn't "oh, I heard that was terrible" or "well, I hear good things, but it doesn't sound like my deal." This is "yeah, I'll get to it." The thing people don't seem to realize is that there are a lot of movies out there. There are even a lot of good movies out there. In genres I like. And okay, I still spend a certain amount of time watching bad movies. Even [i]re[/i]watching bad movies, which is a whole other issue that I'm vaguely embarrassed about. However, the more I heard about this movie, the more I figured I'd probably like it. So okay, it has been sitting on our shelf for I don't actually know how long. Years, probably. And since I've basically run out of library DVDs and can't find the two I have from Netflix, here we were.

Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal) is a relatively ordinary kid growing up in a small town in Maine. His father was a fighter pilot and is dead; he lives alone with his mother, Annie (Jennifer Aniston), a waitress in a diner. One day, as Sputnik orbits the Earth, he is sitting up watching TV while his mother is at work. The TV stops working. The power goes all wonky. And Hogarth goes out into the night to find out what's going on, because he's an intrepid kid that way. And what he sees is, well, an Iron Giant (Vin Diesel). He befriends it, as kids in this setting are wont to do, and but he quickly realizes that he needs to hide his new friend from, like, everyone. Someone, however, has seen it and has summoned The Government, in the person of Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald). Kent wants the recognition that finding an alien invader would bring. Meanwhile, Hogarth enlists the help of local metal artist Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick, Jr.) to hide his friend.

Director Brad Bird also made my favourite Pixar film (if not actually the best), [i]The Incredibles[/i]. There are some distinct similarities between the two films; both draw on a certain retro-futuristic feel. While both have a lot of science fiction trappings, both are really more about the people than the tech. Even the eponymous giant is really more developed as a character than just treated as Technology. Yes, okay, there are those drones in [i]The Incredibles[/i], but they're a product of a certain pattern of thought and can be seen, in an odd way, as an insight into the mind of the villain. Still, we don't even have that distance here. There are a bunch of townspeople who are mostly there to make the town picturesque and period, but any time we interact with one of them, they have at least the glimmering of personality. We don't know how the Giant works, but we don't have to; the point is not what he is but who he is.

Yeah, okay, there are also a few anachronisms, such as the idea that the Giant might be a "downed satellite," given that there was, at the time, only one satellite and everyone would know if it were down. Okay. Most of the anachronisms would have been pretty easy to fix, too. However, some of them were "this car is from the wrong year," which I must confess I would not have noticed on my own, not being a car person. (Actually, the word "beatnik" is apparently an anachronism, which I should have noticed and wouldn't have.) However, there were none that I found particularly glaring, which is unusual for a movie of this sort. It feels as though they were actually trying; after all, they made the cars recognizable sorts, which there is really no need to do. I think most of us, including the film's target audience of, you know, children, would have been okay with "generic '50s-looking car." As it turns out, it probably would have been better if they'd left it that way, but whatever.

My plan for when my kid gets old enough to put DVDs in the player and watch them on his own is to put together all the ones he's allowed to watch without us on a separate shelf. I don't know if this one will make it onto that shelf; there's some moderately scary stuff to it. (The full version of the fake "duck and cover" cartoon is pretty horrific, actually.) This is a decision you'd have to make on a kid-by-kid basis. The film is rated PG, and for a reason. When I was fairly young, this actually would have terrified me, but I am of an age where I was scared of nuclear war as a small child. (That my parents watched a lot of news didn't much help with that.) I can't say that children today (who don't see as much of the news) would feel that way. Still, there's some sad stuff, some scary stuff, and some really unpleasant characters. I really do feel that watching it first, or at bare minimum watching it with your kid, is a wise idea before letting your child see it alone. Remember, not all animation is G-rated--or should be.