Tapping into the extraordinary

THE IRON GIANT (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 1999)

The 1950's is an era that has always fascinated me, and so any film that focuses on such a long forgotten time and place of innocence and sensibility is one I look forward to. Earlier this year, there was "October Sky," a film centered on an ambitious boy's dreams of rockets in a West Virginia mining town. "The Iron Giant" is the latest film set in the 1950's when the Cold War had just started, focusing on a farm boy befriending a giant metal robot unaware of its potential harm.

The film begins with an innocent, likable lad, Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal), who desperately wants a pet but his single mother (Jennifer Aniston) will not allow it. One day, the antenna at the house fails to work, and Hogarth notices that something gnawed and bit its way to his house. He searches in the middle of the woods near the power station and finds a giant metal robot wrestling with the electrical power lines. The boy is mystified and in awe of this giant creature - he slowly observes how calm it is and befriends it. Of course, how can he explain to his mom that his new pet is over twenty stories high? He tries to hide it in the barn, but it manages to make the other parts of its body function on their own. In one hectic scene, Hogarth pants and squirms trying to push the robot's hand out the bathroom window while his mother knocks on the door.

"The Iron Giant" has a little bit of everything. There are mad generals, insanely clumsy government agents, lazy beatniks, Mad magazines, disbelieving townsfolk, Atomic Age training films, junkyards, etc. Just about anything associated with the 1950's is presented here with no shame (those training films are hilarious), as well as various rock songs from that period.

"The Iron Giant" also has charm and pathos to spread, and it does it convincingly with the simple metal giant who is also a weapon sent from the enemy (possibly the Russians?) It is friendly, jovial, learns how to speak and eats anything metal, but it can also fire missiles when threatened to defend itself. The advertising for "The Iron Giant" and the look of the robot strangely reminded me of the short Nazi animated film shown in 1991's "The Rocketeer" - a combination of shock and terror at the possibility of something threatening our world during a time of political chaos.

"The Iron Giant" is often preachy, reverential and its anti-gun message could not come at a better time (This review was written in 1999, not long after the Colombine Massacre, but it could be relatively more subtle than proclaiming that guns are bad). There are the typical stereotypes and cliches but in a sense, none of that matters. For an animated film that is as well-designed and clever as this one, this is entertaining, boisterous, simple fun thriving on simple pleasures. "The Iron Giant" taps into our dreams of finding a genuine friend in the form of something extraordinary, and it delivers.