Attention, parents: Don’t hate “Astro Boy” just because his giant image is embla zoned across the front of the Times Square Toys ‘R’ Us.
This computer-animated adaptation of the 1950s-created future boy from Osamu Tezuka, the godfather of Japanese manga, is actually a sweet and endearing movie.
Attention, kids: It’s also packed with action!
The action begins in Metro City, a sort of Jetsons hometown on steroids, which floats above a junk-strewn, “Wall-E”-like Earth.
It’s where government scientist Dr. Tenma (voiced by Nicolas Cage) builds and programs a robot replica of Toby, the son he loses in a horrible accident. But the reconstituted kid doesn’t know he’s a robot — until his father, realizing the creation can’t replace his flesh-and-blood son, casts him out.
But quicker than you can say “inevitable sequel,” a Strangelovian President Stone (Donald Sutherland) demands the young robot’s “blue core” power source and sends out his warrior “Peacekeeper” robot to find him by any means necessary.
Cue the chase scene in which young robot boy, having discovered he has superpowers such as flying and flame-shooting, ends up escaping by falling to Earth.
Once there, he falls in with a group of urchins under the charge of the Fagin-like Hamegg (an appropriately hammy Nathan Lane), who rebuilds trash-heap robots to compete at the Robot Games, a battle-to-destruction that recalls Roman times.
Fearing he’ll lose his new friends (including big-eyed waif Clara), Astro Boy — as he’s known now — pretends to be human, like them. Hamegg, however, isn’t fooled and forces Astro into the Robot Games.
What’s nice about “Astro Boy,” which clocks in at a just-right 95 minutes, is the little touches of humor sprinkled throughout.
A funny side story involves three disheveled, Brit-accented robots of the Robot Liberation Front, a spoof on communists (a poster at their headquarters is for the Trotsky Quartet instead of the classical Brodsky Quartet).
And Sutherland’s President Stone, who insists all his actions are “a matter of national security,” can’t understand his low approval ratings: “I’ve cut taxes for a lot of very influential friends. I was popular in high school,” he whines.
A destructive, full-speed-ahead finale chase in Metro City recalls both “The Incredibles” and the old “Godzilla” movies.
Astro Boy, in his big-screen debut (there was an American TV cartoon in the early ’60s), makes you want to root for him — even if he does look a lot like Bob’s Big Boy.