Animonday: The Iron Giant
I always thought that when I finally got around to watching The Iron Giant it would turn out to be overrated. How wrong I was.
Funny, action packed and never dumbed down for its target audience, this was a joy from start to finish. All the voice cast are brilliant but Christopher McDonald and Eli Marienthal are worthy of special mention. Marienthal voices the films hero, a boy named Hogarth, through whose eyes we experience the wonder of meeting the huge metal man from outer space, without his note perfect performance the central relationship between boy and robot wouldn’t work and without that the film would crumble. McDonald is Kent Mansley, the government agent sent to investigate the strange goings on in a small town in Maine and getting all the best laughs in the process.
The Iron Giant was one of the last great traditional animated features. It shows that even a kids film can be intelligent and have a message, in fact there’s more going on here than in any of the big budget Hollywood blockbusters that were out this summer.
