#012 - astro boy (2009)
hello and welcome to my weblog. tonight i watched astro boy (2009)
the thing about nic cage is that he achieves the kind of maximalist performance we love by employing his entire body. by having a physicality, a presence, and a need to have that presence felt and acknowledged. but in voice acting, he loses most of his toolbox and at least in this movie, this astro-boy, his performance is disappointingly flat. i have seen him as a mad scientist and as a grieving father in ways that would work well for this film but he doesn’t achieve that here. i think it may be that nic cage struggles to sit in a recording booth reading lines. one imagines nic cage struggling to sit still generally. nic cage needs to be jumping around, all nervous jitters and weird little hand gestures, in front of a camera and an adoring crew.
in this movie nic cage plays a defense contractor who immediately kills his only child in a robot weapon demonstration and, instead of reëvaluating his career choices, decides to build a new weapons platform in the image of his dead son and gets frustrated when he realizes that his new robot does not immediately have the exact same personality as his dead son. the robot child is soon exiled to a sort of garbage underworld where he is eventually tricked into performing gladiatorial combat. in the dramatic climax of the film, the robot boy attempts to kill the mayor through a suicide bombing attack. this movie is rated pg in case you were wondering. i had to double check this myself just now. wild stuff.