Now that we’ve settled in a little bit in Maryland, and canceled our Blockbuster® subscription for the moment, it was time to head out and search for our nearest movie rental place. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t a Blockbuster® – instead it was a “Redbox”, located outside one of our local grocery stores.

For those of you who have never heard of “Redbox”, it’s a machine (about the size of an arcade game) that lets you select a movie, you swipe a credit card, it charges your account $1.06, and it spits out a movie that you get to keep for 24 hours. It’s a lot cheaper than renting from Blockbuster® (although the subscription is still probably the best way to go if you watch a lot of movies).

As it turns out, however, we discovered the drawbacks to using Redbox when we excitedly rushed to grab a copy of Avatar (2009) – and discovered it was not yet among the selections. Instead, we grabbed copies of a couple of movies we’d missed over the past month or so – and Astro Boy was one of them.

So, would our Avatar (2009)-less evening be a blessing in disguise, as we uncovered the hidden gem of Astro Boy, or would we be pining more than ever for a couple of James Cameron’s blue people?

Relative unknown Freddie Highmore takes on the role of Astro Boy in the film, and seems well suited to the task. Since his voice is not recognizable, viewers won’t have the dilemma of trying to match a voice to a face, and should easily accept him as Astro Boy. While his voice does get a bit irritating, it also seems to be in the correct age range for the character (who, after all, is a young boy), so once again will ease viewers into accepting the voice without distancing themselves from the film.

While Freddie isn’t well recognized, what would an animated film be these days without recognizable voice actors? Needless to say, Astro Boy has this covered, with familiar names from Nicolas Cage to Bill Nighy lending their considerable talents to voice various characters in the film.

While Nic Cage is easiest to recognize, he’s also the one who has to try the hardest to keep the viewer focused on his animated visage rather than picturing his real very recognizable countenance. Since his character is rather wildly different – both in looks and in actions – than what the viewer is used to seeing from Nic, the viewer will find themselves somewhat distracted from the film every time they hear Nic’s voice coming out of this odd character. Thankfully, this effect does wear off before the end of the film, and the viewer will have accepted the character before the end credits roll.

Donald Sutherland, also easily recognizable, has a much easier job of things, as his voice seems to fit his character perfectly. His gruff exclamations fit in smoothly with the power-abusing military man he voices, and viewers will have no problem believing his character from the start.

The rest of the recognizable members of the voice cast are not as easily recognizable, and blend in well with their characters from the start.

Unfortunately, the plot has a problem. While the concept of a man creating a robot boy to replace his deceased son is solid, and leads to a plot that takes of most of the screen-time, the big bad villain of the film doesn’t really make sense at all. At first, the viewer will be able to overlook the idiotic and never fully explained reasons why the villain wants Astro so badly – and viewers may try to overllook the silly reasoning by imagining the villain is a criticism on war-hungry president like G B.

But, as time wears on, and the villain keeps spouting nonsensical reasons why he’s tooling around in giant warships without the public blinking an eye, the viewer’s common sense will start scoffing at the villain – hugely decreasing any attempt to keep the viewer worried Astro may not make it through. After all, the viewer may start to think, with this laughable villain, if he can’t make it through, well, then there was really no hope for the character at all – this, despite the villain tossing a vast array of insanely powerful weapons at poor little Astro.

The special effects, however, were very good throughout, if more in an anime style than one usually sees in film. Whether Astro is pummeling his way through a mountain or soaring into the clouds, there never comes a moment where the animation style differs, or suffers at all. True, his odd, plastic-looking spiky hairdo, etc. take some getting used to, but fans of anime should latch on to this style almost immediately.

Despite having a ridiculously evil villain whose reasoning is never fully explained (or probably was ever even thought about), Astro Boy turns out decently in it’s transistion from comic book and television to the big screen, thanks to an intriguing concept, a mostly-solid voice cast and decent anime-style animation.

And, if what I’ve heard about the television series is any indication, a ridiculous stereotype of a villain seems about par for the course, so fans of the series should embrace this big screen adaptation wholeheartedly.