IN most respects, “The Iron Giant” is one of the better animated children’s films in recent memory, which makes its strident political correctness all the more frustrating.
Leave it to Hollywood to transform “The Iron Man,” a beloved 1968 English children’s book, into a left-wing fable about McCarthyism and nuclear warfare. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, this robot’s for you.
It’s a pity that politics, and of an especially pernicious kind, intrude into a discussion of this entertaining, heartwarming kids’ movie. But director Brad Bird forces the issue by reinventing the story as a forthright allegory of America’s anti-Communist “paranoia.”
It starts in 1957, with a meteor speeding past the orbiting Sputnik and crashing into the ocean off Maine. The meteor is actually a 10-story robot, which hides in the woods outside the quaint village of Rockwell (as in Norman).
One night, while his single mom (voice of Jennifer Aniston) is working the late shift at the diner, little Hogarth Hughes (voice of Eli Marienthal) discovers the Iron Giant caught in the sparking wires of an electrical power station. The robot appears to be dying until Hogarth flips the off switch.
Hogarth and the Iron Giant become friends, meeting secretly in the woods because, as Hogarth says, “People always wig out and start shooting when they see something different.”
The giant’s persecutor emerges in the guise of Kent Mansley (voice of Christopher McDonald), a government agent looking to make his career by rooting out Commie infiltrators. He suspects the Russkies may have a secret weapon skulking around Rockwell and harasses Hogarth into ratting out his steely pal.
Things head to an atomic showdown with the U.S. Army, which is willing to destroy Rockwell in order to kill the “Red.” “He’s a gun that walks!” shrieks a government guy.
That he certainly is, but the Iron Giant seeks peaceful coexistence and will only use his sophisticated weaponry in self-defense. That’s what Soviet apologists said about the U.S.S.R., too.
“The Iron Giant” cannily tips its hat to the way sci-fi films of the late 1950s sublimated the country’s Cold War jitters. But what’s so infuriating is how the film perpetuates the lie that the Soviet Union was no threat at all, and that the search for Soviet spies was about nothing more than persecuting misunderstood innocent outsiders.
None of this will likely matter to children, who will see a beautifully told fable about a boy and his secret friend, and the noble sacrifice that friend makes for the boy’s love. The writing is vivid and bright, the voicing accomplished, and the storytelling emotionally satisfying.
The animation, while nowhere near Disney’s sophisticated standard, is exuberant and as appealing as the movie’s history and politics are appalling.
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THE IRON GIANT
Starring the voices of Jennifer Aniston and Eli Marienthal. Directed by Brad Bird. Running time: 86 minutes. Rating: PG. At Lincoln Square, Orpheum, Union Square 14, others.