The Iron Giant

The Iron Giant is a first-rate animated sci-fi/comedy/drama/early-Cold War story that's appropriate for children, the first feature film made by writer/director Brad Bird (The Incredibles). I've seen it a bunch of times over the past few years, but am remembering it now because my nephew was over today and I put it on for him when I had to stop playing and go talk business with his pop.

Set in small-town Maine in the good ol' days of "duck and cover", The Iron Giant follows a young boy named Hogarth as he stumbles upon a several hundred feet tall metal behemoth while exploring the local woods. Hogarth is somewhat lonely, having neither a father nor friends, and because he's a little boy his reaction to the giant is not fear, but the impressed delight that comes from a child aquiring something that's beyond cool. As he teaches it rudimentary English, and, more importantly, how to play with him, the lonely giant and the lonely boy forge an odd and wonderful friendship.

Of course, a metal giant can't go unnoticed for long. Enter special agent Kent Manley, come to investigate the rumours and determine the extent of what is obviously a Russian threat. Manley is a reasonable enough stereotype of the spook: invasive, gung-ho, easily prone to overreaction; yet one of the many things that makes Bird a good writer is the fact that while Manley quickly becomes the villain of the story - on top of all his other failings, he starts making advances on Hogarth's mother, much to the boy's understandable anger - it is always clear that he and the misinformation he feeds are villainous, not the military itself, nor how it responds to what it rightly assumes is honest intel.

Hogarth's main ally in all this is a beatnik artiste named Dean (smoooooth Harry Connick Jr.) who owns a scrapyard and "sculpts" metal. Dean's laid-back, um, beatnikness, coupled with the fact that he can hide the giant when necessary by claiming it as artwork, make him the perfect companion to believe in the giant's goodness and innocence. Bird always fills his movies with little touches that pull everything together - in the scene when Dean wakes up to find a giant in his scrap heap, watch out for what's printed on the back of his bathrobe as he walks away. Dean is a really great character - far from the stereotypical father figure, and quite easygoing, at the same time he's hardly irresponsible or irrational. He's a lot of fun. And he's Harry Connick Jr. Oh yeah.

I mentionned the giant's goodness, which could have been implausible and mawkish, seeing as how he's a war machine. No time is wasted on creating a backstory for the giant; all we know about him is learned from paying attention. We don't know what made the giant crashed on earth, but we do know from the huge dent in his huge head that his memory is badly damaged. What triggers his memory - and his reactions to that trigger - make good sense in this framework. Also, it is considered by many that the one- and two-word lines of the giant are Vin Diesel's best work. :D

The Iron Giant is loaded with great dialogue, strong pacing, nice ol' 2D watercolour animation, and attention to detail. An animated, not-so-spoofed "duck and cover" sequence is hilarious, and the film is full of tributes to that other great Maine-based Cold War comedy, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!. It also has what may or may not be an intentional nod to the ending of Alex Ross's DC Comics masterwork, Kingdom Come. Either way, it's a great film whether you have a kid or not. I don't think Brad Bird views children's films as a separate genre, and there are lots of good arguments for that which I think are all self-evident in his work. He just makes good movies, period. The fact that they're also ones you can watch with your younger relatives is just icing on the cake.