Family Fun - That's Actually Fun!

One of the finest movies I have ever seen is a cartoon. Deal with it!

The Iron Giant is everything a movie should be - animated or not. It's a throwback to the flying-saucer flicks of the fifties, but with nineties sensibilities. Its closest cousin is E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, a story about a boy who protects a hunted alien. But this film has a style that leaves even E.T. feeling a little bland.

Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal) is a kid living in fifties America, which is both joyful and lonely. His mother, Annie (Jennifer Anniston) is a waitress at a local diner - a spot this film wrings dry of nostalgia. That means that, more often than not, Hogarth is on his own - a situation more common to latchkey kids than the invented family traumas of Lilo & Stitch. If he weren't so full of life, Hogarth might have reason to feel sorry for himself, but the vitality of life runs through him like the medichlorian count at a Skywalker Family Reunion.

The story kicks into gear when an object falls from the sky on a night when Hogarth is left alone, to be kept company by a TV set showing scary movies. Sneaking out of the house to take a look for himself, Hogarth comes upon The Iron Giant (voiced by Vin Diesel). Like E.T. and Elliott, it's a first meeting that leaves both ready to run for the hills. But unlike that other friendship between a kid and something not of this world, a gentle heart is not something visible to the naked eye. It's easy to accept E.T. as something less than forbidding, given his diminutive stature. The gentle nature of the Iron Giant is more of a contradiction - as his wiring and physique make him anything but a metal Gandhi. Rather, this walking weapon of mass destruction lives in peace because he chooses to, with a childlike compassion that makes him easily misunderstood.

Half the fun of this film comes in watching boy and giant try to make a friendship out of a chance encounter. As happened in E.T., this is too big a discovery to be kept completely under wraps. Hogarth can't wait to share it with Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick, Jr.) - a hipster whose philosophy of "live and let live" sets him apart from most of the adults Hogarth knows. If you look at it closely enough, these four - Hogarth, Annie, Dean and The Iron Giant - are four of a kind: They're folks who don't fit in within the box of Fifties America.

Of course, no movie like this would be complete without a bad guy. Junior G-Man, Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) has descended upon this sleepy mountain town, looking for the aliens who have landed. He's convinced that we're under attack - and he'll stop at nothing to prove he's right, even if it means killing whatever he finds. It's at this point that the story veers as close as it'll get to the meanness of cartoon conventions. The storyline is far too familiar to admit of many surprises. What makes it such a joy to watch is the freshness with which it works the material.

In the 90s, conventional wisdom suggested aiming the material somewhere between the target audience of young kids and the adults who'd have to sit with them through two hours of mush. With the exception of the Pokeymon movies (which were written by Satan himself) - 90s cartoons shot over the heads of their kiddie audience, with sexual innuendo and political references. This film, on the other hand, aims at adults who are kids at heart. It's one of the most heartwarming films I have seen, but without compromising on "watchability."

It's a kiddie film that adults can enjoy - without feeling as guilty as a cubscout leader at Hooters.