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Astro Boy film review: new-fangled retro fun – Cinetology

All too well conditioned by cinema’s dispiriting habit of transforming old school animated TV shows into retch-a-rific buckets of movie lard enjoyed only by the thoroughly forgiving, the morbidly curious and the criminally tasteless, I must admit to not having very high hopes – along with everybody else in the sane world – for Astro Boy’s new-fangled big screen reboot. The cinematic... Read moreAll too well conditioned by cinema’s dispiriting habit of transforming old school animated TV shows into retch-a-rific buckets of movie lard enjoyed only by the thoroughly forgiving, the morbidly curious and the criminally tasteless, I must admit to not having very high hopes – along with everybody else in the sane world – for Astro Boy’s new-fangled big screen reboot. The cinematic forays of his retro toon colleagues have, after all, set almost unbelievably low standards (think Garfield, think Inspector Gadget, think Scooby Doo), though this time around the vision comes not from Hollywood but from Hong Kong-based animation studio Imagi which is, as this movie amply demonstrates, a very good thing. View page