The Iron Giant (US. 1999)

Director/Writer: Brad Bird

Simple.

It’s an easy word. Two syllables. Why don’t more people grasp it’s genius? The majority of film clogging your cineplexes would rather carpet bomb you with jumbled, over-thought and chokingly complex ideas. “The hero has an evil twin, that’s a prehistoric bird, and they fight crime, tax crimes, in a future run by giant midgets!!”
The Iron Giant is a simple animated film. Does this make it a bad one? Nope. I’d go as far to say that the simplicity makes it a classic one.

Loosely based on the storybook by Ted Hughes, the film is set in the late 50's when communist paranoia was at it’s peak. A young boy (Eli Marienthal) left alone by his single mom (Jennifer Anniston) for the night goes wandering into the woods and comes across a 50 foot tall metal munching robot. (Vin Diesel). The boy gets scared, learns that the robot is probably even more terrified, they bond, the robot gets threatened by the army and an obsessed general (Harry Connick Jr.) and the robot (COMMIE SCUM!) redeems himself in the eyes of the public. It’s not complex. The story is linear. There isn’t an unnecessary abundance of characters. The hand drawn animation style is clean cut and smooth. The comedy isn’t of the dick and fart joke variety. It stems from the characters and situations. Nothing absolutely hilarious but feel-good all the same. Director/Writer Brad Bird (Ratatouille, The Incredible) knows how to bring all the elements together to make them work in an organic fashion. The situation is never painted as an outlandish event that WILL BLOW YOUR MIND WITH AWESOME EXPLOSIONS! It’s exciting for sure, but also grounded and real. People would probably react this way if a giant robot weapon started to stomp around and blow up thing wildly. Plus more dying and blood I imagine.

Iron Giant succeeds because it lets the really emotional parts get to dance a little jig on stage instead of getting lost in the shuffle of forgetful sub-plots and lame ass ‘entertaining’ fat. It never dumbs itself down for the kiddies. The grand moral of the film is, yet again, simple: No one dictates what you are or can be. The robot was built to be a giant Martian space weapon, but that he shouldn’t let it dictate his purpose. It’s all up to you to make your own choices. It isn’t anything ground breaking. Many a children’s stories have dealt with it before with buckets of sob story melodramatics. Why does it succeed here? I can only say that as climax reared it’s robotic head a few tears might have dribbled down my cheek. It was probably just a little dust in my eye.

NOTE: Iron Giant BOMBED at the box-office when it was first released. It has since become a cult hit (Even mainstream if we stretched the truth enough) through a number of DVD releases. The current one is as good as we’re going to get, with a mellow commentary from Bird and a few short features on the Voice Acting and