APRIL 2005: Hello all, yes, I am still alive! See Personal Homepage for more! :)
APRIL 2005: Hello all, yes, I am still alive! See Personal Homepage for more! :)
Member since:18.08.2001
Reviews:61
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It seems to me that non-Disney feature length ‘cartoon’ films seem to be taking over the animation market. Whereas Disney’s recent releases (Mulan, The Emperor’s New Groove and Dinosaur spring to mind) have not achieved the success of their earlier releases, such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, animation features that are coming from the folds of other production studios are doing roaring trade, Shrek being an excellent example. One other such animation feature is The Iron Giant, which was produced by Warner Brothers.
The Iron Giant is an animation adaptation of the Ted Hughes book ‘The Iron Man’, which most of us probably read in school. The film tells the story of Hogarth Hughes, a young adventurous boy who makes a discovery that is feared by most but terrifically exciting to him. Whether the film actually stays true to the original story, I’m afraid I can’t say because it’s been so long since I have read it.
Hogarth lives with his mother, Annie, in the town of Rockwell, Maine. The year is 1957 and in the era of post-WWII paranoia, anything foreign or drastically futuristic is fodder for scaremongers. This sets us up for the start of the film. A fishing boat off the coast of Rockwell spies a giant iron man during a storm and when the elderly fisherman tells the townsfolk what he saw, many laugh it off though some are nervous. Hogarth, however, immediately jumps on the theory that there are ‘invaders from Mars’ in the area.
One night when his mother is working late, Hogarth is watching TV when the signal becomes disrupted. He goes up to check on the aerial, only to find it ripped off, with a trail of broken fences leading away from the house and into the woods. Hogarth is convinced that it is the ‘invaders’, and promptly dons an army helmet and goes off into the woods with his BB gun.
It is here that Hogarth meets the Iron Giant and rescues him from being electrocuted in a power surge that shorts out the town. Annie arrives home to
find Hogarth gone, and is driving out by the woods in search of her son when he stumbles out into the road, telling her that a giant iron man ate their TV aerial.
In the following days, Hogarth ventures back out into the woods to try and find the Iron Giant, and find him he does. He begins to teach him words and wants to become his friend. But when the Iron Giant breaks the train tracks in order to get some food, a cargo train is derailed and the driver reports the incident, saying that he has seen a huge metal man.
As more reports drift in and a satellite output shows that an unidentified object entered the armosphere around the Maine area a few days earlier, a government agent called Kip Mansley makes his way to Rockwell to dig out the truth. Smarmy and underhand, Kip weasles his way into the Hughes house when he finds evidence in the woods that Hogarth knows the whereabouts of the Iron Giant.
Hogarth manages to hide the Iron Giant at the local scrapyard, run by Dean McCoppin. Here Dean also befriends the giant as well as feeds him, and the three enjoy a few fun days before the government closes in. There are some great scenes as the trio head to the lake – Hogarth cannon-balling into the water, Dean reading a paper and being cool, and the Iron Giant trying to copy what Hogarth does. Hogarth plays games with the Iron Giant as he re-enacts fights and space travel (a really funny scene, with Hogarth being whizzed about in a car). Even Dean gets in on the act, getting the Iron Giant to help him bend metal to make his art.
Whether trigger-happy agent Mansley finds the Iron Giant and what becomes of him, I will leave you to find out!
I really enjoyed this film. I first saw it one afternoon on Sky when I was ill, and huddled under a duvet on the sofa. I watched it a few more times when it was repeated over the following weeks and picked it up on DVD at the weekend, as it is currently included in the £9.99 offer that is on at most stores.
This film was definitely better than any of Disney’s latest efforts (though I did watch Tarzan the other day and thought that was quite good). It is very humourous, but also very touching – it made me laugh out loud throughout, and I will also readily admit to shedding a tear or two at the end!
The characters are all very enjoyable and believeable. Hogarth is voiced by Eli Marienthal (Jack Frost, American Pie 1 & 2), who has the most enthusiastic voice I have heard in someone so young. He portrays Hogarth’s excitement so well, which makes a nice change from a lot of sugary, fakey young actors that we usually get.
Annie Hughes is voiced by Jennifer Aniston (Friends, The Leprechaun!), which I was surprised by – I didn’t know she was involved with this film until I saw the credits. She does a really great job actually. As director Brad Bird (The Simpsons) says in one of the extra features (see below), when you think of the All American Mom, you don’t think of Jennifer Aniston and yet she’s made the character of Annie Hughes very convincing. The relationship between Hogarth and his Mum is a very comfy, best-friends type of relationship and Eli Marienthal and Jennifer Aniston have done a really great job of portraying it.
Dean McCoppin is voiced by Harry Connick Jr (Hope Floats, Copycat). Dean’s a great character as he is supposed to be a model example of the Beat Generation, which he really is. He wears roll neck sweaters and black frame glasses, drinks espresso, listens to jazz and makes art out of metal scrap. The fact that he is even called Dean lays testimony to this, as one of the main characters in On the Road by Jack Kerouac (the Beat Generation ‘Bible’) is called Dean. Again, Harry Connick Jr has done a great job of portraying Dean’s character. He has a real laidback Lousiana drawl which really makes Dean come across as a carefree, smooth kinda guy.
The Iron Giant is voiced by Vin Diesel (Pitch Black, The Boiler Room), but obviously with a little bit of help from mechanical synthesisers! As you can imagine, he doesn’t speak a lot, but the few words he does say and the feelings he portrays through murmurs and grunts (!) make the Iron Giant’s character really come alive.
Kip Mansley is voiced by Christopher McDonald (Veronica’s Closet, The Skulls, Happy Gilmore). At first I thought it was Tim Allen – he has that similar, deep voice and the character of Kip does speak a lot like Buzz Lightyear when he still thought he was a space ranger – ‘Kip Mansley, work for the government’ he intones as he meets Hogarth for the first time. He's also a very cheesy character - this is shown in a multitude of scenes where Kip is badgering Hogarth and keeps calling him ‘sport’, ‘slugger’, ‘chief’ and ‘ranger’ amongst other things.
The extras on the DVD include the usual scene selection, language choices and interactive menus, along with the trailer, Making Of documentary and a music video from the film. The Making Of documentary is about 20-25 minutes long and is presented by Vin Diesel (yum!). It briefly covers the actors involved, the animation process, the music and the sound effects. It’s not as in depth as other Making Of’s I’ve seen – it’s more like the short documentaries that Sky shove in between their films when they have a spare 20 minutes. It was obviously originally shown on American TV as it has ‘breaks’ in it where Vin says ‘When we come back, we’ll be taking a look at the design process of the Iron Giant, right here on the WB!’. Then there’s an actual mini-credits bit which ‘takes us to commercial’, immediately followed by another which ‘brings us back in’ and then the documentary continues. A bit annoying, but it’s better than no Making Of at all, I like these bits.
Overall I really enjoyed this film. Of course, it’s targeted at children with a U rating as all animation features are, but it’s definitely one for all the family. It strikes a chord with the modern day as well – Hogarth has no father figure and there is no mention of where his father is, there’s panic over artificial intelligence and threat of nuclear arms, there’s even the moral of ‘be whoever you choose to be’. And cheesy it might be, but if I can cry at the Iron Giant but not at ET, then they must have done something right!! And this, of course, has nothing to do with Vin Diesel.
www.theirongiant.com
PS) I've taken away a star mainly for the fact there are only a few extra features, otherwise it's 5 star!
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![The Iron Giant [DVD] [1999]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78533757.jpg "The Iron Giant [DVD] [1999]")
Nov 12th, 2001
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