Jetpack Orphan Mugging Brigade

Astro Boy (2009)

Rating ... B+ (78)

UK animation vet and Flushed Away mastermind David Bowers returns to uproarious adventure and subversive social commentary by reinvigorating Tezuka's classic Astro Boy franchise; sly British double entendres and montage gags that hearken back to The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory cleanse the palate of smug pop culture referencing under the pretense of humor employed by the procession of American animated Shrek devotees, but it's the shrewd analysis of values in future society that provides a compelling reason to stick around.

Astro Boy subtly plays its hand with a polygonal PSA / infomercial to open the film entitled Our Friends The Robots that explains how technological advance in Metro City - primary hub for the world's smartest and most successful - enabled self propulsion, a way for the city to suspend itself above the planet's surface and turn its citizens into a literal high society. Robots populate Metro City to automate service industries and routine maintenance, the latter of which amusingly includes the consideration that accompanies "call[ing] mom on her birthday." Seamless graphic match emphasizes Metro City as society fixated on convenience while the segment establishes the locale's groundwork ethos: elitism ("we don't really know what happens on the strange and mysterious surface we left behind") and seclusion. (The surface is acknowleged when robots at the end of their lifespan are thrown there as trash.)

Despite how it might sound, Metro City is more utopian than dystopian. Its standard of living is peachy. Creativity and education are at an all-time high, and they've more or less eradicated complacency. Fathers are too busy with scientific progress to have much time for their kids, but at least the shopworn conceit is depicted primarily with figuratism (Dr. Tenma is a holographic presence on Toby's ride to school) and resolved during act one. Now if only there was a solution to placate those disgruntled residents of old Earth on whose doorstep Metro City dumps its waste...

The problem is more complicated than it seems. A "one of us" reference to Freaks earmarks the pariah status of the surface dwellers, while their Robot Games are little more than a modern colosseum - evidence of the resentment and savagery of class conflict, as well as their Beowulf-ian need to witness society's vanguards reduced in status. Of course, the demeanor of the distinguished - immodest, aloof, oblivious - could hardly be called leading by example. Dr. Tenma's creation Astro Boy grafts human memory to robotic exoskeleton, providing a face for the budding problem of sentient slave robots. A play on the word "grace" implies the demise of religion in enlightened society but issues are still solved with militarism, from trigger-happy politicians, arm-wrestling military officers, and the hilariously inefficient goldfish poop gang, Robot Revolutionary Front. Supporting characters aid in blurring class distinctions, from the runaway brat Cora (Kristen Bell) to evicted robot engineer Ham Egg (Nathan Lane), but there's also subtext to be gleaned from the minutia. An early establishing shot of junked Earth covered with robot scraps features several statues and monuments haphazardly constructed out of the surface debri; it's an innocuous detail, but telling all the same. Society needs and values its best and brightest, whether they know it or not.