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.
Horror and Western film buff, Marvel comic geek, music lover and occasional gamer. 
It is one of the much more enjoyable and adult-friendly animated films around.
Trivia: The film came around after Pete Townshend had a great success translating his musical “The Iron Man” to the stage. At first the movie was going to be a more or less direct adaptation, but they decided against it and went for a more child friendly movie (even though Townshend’s album is very child friendly). Pete Townshend is still listed as the Executive Producer.
While it’s a “nice” album, most of it is nowhere near as good as the rest of his solo stuff, The Who, or the film. “Dig” is probably the only lovable song on it, partly because it has Roger Daltrey singing (and on the alternate version, Simon Townshend. Both good).