Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

catholiccontriversy I like the Astro Boy series (60s, 80s, and 00s), all of which are a little different from each other, but with a lot of the same heart. So when I watched the movie, well it left me feeling a bit...weird.Now a lot of people like to complain about the voice acting, and character designs, and the art and animation style. I don't have any problem with those things though. The character designs are faithful to the source material, but with it's own CGI twist; just like each series had it's own little art twist based on the capabilities and budget at the time. Each series also had it's own voice actors, and the VAs in this movie did a good job at bringing their character's life.With that being said, this is like a 10 act story, with a couple acts cut out. There's the establishing act with Toby's death and Astro being created; the next act is Tenma trying to use Astro to replace Toby, but then finding that he can't so easily replace his dead son; the next act follows Astro making friends and trying to come to find his place in the world (robot or human), only to have the world (the surface) kind of reject who he is and instead thrust their own idea of who he should be onto him; and then we just jump to the final act where the villain's monster becomes too powerful and now Astro has to save the day (which has many "self discovery of powers" elements that should be reserved for middle "figure out your powers" act, not "final climax battle").If you ask me, this should have been a TV series. It has all the potential to be another great incarnation of Astro Boy; Astro Boy origin, figuring out how Astro fits into the world, and characters that have a lot of potential. Unfortunately, a lot of elements that should have gotten their own episode (metro city's trash culture, the robot resistance, the girl's parents, Astro pretending to be human with the surface dwellers, the robot games, fixing up ZOG, competing in the robot games and his new friends coming to grips with what he is, the government trying to shut him down, why the president wants to harness the power of the red/blue core, etc.) were just kind of rushed through.I enjoy the movie, but I just feel wanting more.

Dalbert Pringle *Possible Spoilers* With its emphasis on recyclable cuteness, reusable cleverness, and regenerated CG wizardry, I would never go so far as to say that I hated Astro Boy - But, then again, I could never, ever say that I loved it, either.If you were to actually take the time to watch the original, 2-D Astro Boy cartoons from the mid-1960s, I'm sure, like myself, that you'd most likely find them to be much more entertaining and, yes, even more thoughtful then this senseless rehashing of the tale of a wide-eyed, pointy-haired, robot boy who (under the surface of his apparent innocence) was essentially a lethal, all-powerful, one-man, destructo-machine that was not to be challenged or provoked into action.It really made no sense to me why, after the real Toby Tenma was killed (due partly to his dad's own inability to protect him), Toby's father, the master scientist, Dr. Tenma, in wanting to re-create his now-dead son, decided to add all of the elaborately designed, over-the-top weaponry, and such, to this pint-sized, mechanical boy.And, after Dr. Tenma got his beloved boy back (thanks to Blue Core radiation), he then wastes no time in rejecting this fabulous creation of his as though it were nothing but a piece of disposable trash.Amongst all of the many explosions and scenes of mass destruction that took place in this pretentiously innocent, little movie it, pretty much, contained every robot/superhero movie-cliché in the book, and then some.On top of that, I found Astro Boy's story borrowed heavily from the basic themes of other films such as - Wall-E, The Iron Giant, David & Goliath, Peter Pan, Frankenstein, Transformers, and The Incredibles - to name but a few.And, so, when you take all of this apparent lifting of ideas into consideration, there was virtually nothing new or original to be found in the entirety of Astro Boy's recycled and predictable story.This film reached the absolute nadir of its intended humor when, in the middle of battle, Astro Boy bent over, forwards, only to find, to his astonishment (and my puzzlement) two miniature-sized, retracting machine guns projecting from out of his butt.Ho-Hum! Like, give me a break, already! Was Toby's crackpot, scientist father really that much of a major moron as to make his replicated son's butt cheeks lethal weapons? I mean, that, to me, was just so unfunny and moronic that it managed to reduce Astro Boy to the level of being nothing but a big cannon for stupid fart jokes.And, finally - I found it really irksome that the pointy-ness of Astro Boy's hair kept changing sides on his head whenever he appeared in another scene.

Nano Maciá I did not see "Astroboy" old animated TV series. So, I had no idea before seeing this film together with my 5 years old son. Although he liked it, I was really disappointed. In "Astroboy", a father first raises his son as a robot, but at that time he is never present (see scene with the dialog between the child and a hologram of his father within the car). Later, once the child dies, the father raises a robot trying to get a child instead. A detestable idea. But he persists in raising something not as a child, giving him books totally inadequate for a child. The story is plagued of scenes of torture on a child: Toby confined in a jail with no windows; Toby suffering explosions of missiles on him; Toby rejected by Dr. Tenma, his father, with rude, direct words; Toby have to fight with an iron monster... and so on. What about the children on the surface? (the third world?)(SPOILER) When Cora finally find her parents, they just say "where were you?" That's all? What is the concept of family or parenthood for the director/writer? In some part, the "revolutionary" robots from the surface tease on the Asimov's laws on robotics. It was very offensive for a talented author as Asimov and their readers as me. Even the pathetic characters of these robots (what they say and how they look) seems a contempt for any revolution. For me, reconciliation between Astroboy and Dr. Temna was a sad ending, not a happy ending. But I could find a positive point in the story: only other children were able to find a human being in a robot seeming a child, not the adults. At less something with hope! (SPOILER) Finally, there are a lot of things too similar to other films: mountains of discharged items from civilization as in "WallE", the very ending with an unexpected alien as in "The Incredibles", the entire process of creation of Astro as in "Frankenstein", the design of the army as in "Star Wars", many resemblances with "The Iron Giant"… Too many coincidences. Good animation technique in fact. But digital animation is not enough to make a good film.

ebiros2 Based on a manga by the late Osamu Tezuka, this US version of Astro Boy only takes cursory hint from the original story, and reinvents the entire story.Dr. Tenma loses his son Tobi, and to substitute for the loss, creates the robot Astro Boy in the image of his late son.First, the image of this movie is very dark. I see this frequently in 3D animation. I guess it's to hide some weakness that's yet to be overcome in this technology, but this makes things look creepy. A movie that's targeted (I believe) for young audience looks like horror movie in its visuals. Second, the charm that was there in the original Astro Boy saga has been totally stripped away in this Hollywood version. It's increased "reality" is in the wrong direction, and slowed the story down considerably. This often happens in movies translated from original comics (Like Marvel's Fantastic Four). The original manga had lot more speed, and brilliance to the story. It's recommended that Tezuka's manga be read, and '60s TV anime series seen before seeing this movie. '60s anime series was supervised by Tezuka himself, and there were lot more emotion, and action to Astro Boy's character. People surrounding Astro Boy were lot more "human" as well. Even the more recent TV anime series had better pace than this movie.So not a very good translation from the original material, and is not recommended for viewing.