Buy it... if you've been somewhat impressed by John Ottman's previous super-hero music but have always waited for him to conjure a resoundingly memorable and emotionally satisfying score of robust continuity for the genre.

Avoid it... if your preference in the animation genre leans toward a short-cue, slapstick format increasingly common to John Powell, because Astro Boy is a far more cohesive overall packaging of the same general sound.

Ottman

Astro Boy: (John Ottman) Just another example of how CGI is abused by studios attempting to resurrect old concepts, Astro Boy is a production with all the glitz and wit and conflict of any ambitious animated children's film of the 2000's, but with predictably fatal flaws. It is inspired by Tezuka Osamu's popular manga concept of the 1950's (like multiple television series also following in its footsteps), action-oriented and packed with some of the best socio-political messages that anime has had to offer. Somewhere in the translation of the concept into this 2009 film, however, Astro Boy somehow ended up raising allegories about American politics and global energy policies, the battle between red and blue factions, as well as a warmongering president and a young upstart, both thinly masked. Director David Bowers also does little to hide influences from recent Pixar and Fox CGI productions involving robots, eventually allowing the picture to degenerate into a simplistic series of generic techno-battles. The heart of the story suffers because of the extraordinary fallacy of logic involved with the tragedy at the start. When the boy genius is killed in an accident right off the bat and his father constructs a robot just like him to house both the boy's memory and an inexplicably insane about of weaponry, little believable effort is put into explaining the boy's transformation of psyche. With intelligence and logic held at a distance, Astro Boy relies upon being airy and cute to survive, resulting in mindless entertainment for the kids that won't interest adults beyond the occasional subversive political references. Parents might be appreciative that their own kids don't have cannons that emerge from their ass cheeks.

A veteran of the super-hero genre in the mainstream is composer John Ottman, whose assigning to the score for Astro Boy was certainly more adept than the choices for most of the actors plugged into the speaking cast. Ottman, despite stirring up a significant amount of positive, major-key bravado for CGI-enhanced action films throughout this decade, had never tackled a straight animated feature film until Astro Boy, and he availed himself of the opportunity to merge his familiar super-hero blend with a touch of Carl Stalling and Raymond Scott in traditional mannerisms and even John Powell in his style of haywire musical creations for very similar contemporary animations. If Ottman's Orphan earlier in the year featured the composer in plainly evident auto-pilot mode, Astro Boy comparatively plays like it was a labor of love for the composer, a description he would probably agree with. Ottman debuted the final product with a flash (and a very early one at that), with two cues from the score performed enthusiastically at a July, 2009 film music festival in the Canary Islands of Spain. Even several months prior to the production's theatrical release, it was clearly evident that Ottman very successfully adapted his previous super-hero sound into a flighty and sentimental atmosphere of innocence. Accomplishing this style without becoming trite is difficult, and the reason for Ottman's triumph is primarily the robust depth of the performances and cues of lengthy development that allow consistency in structures. In other words, unlike most children's adventure scores with dashes of humor abounding, Astro Boy never degenerates into a series of slapstick irritations. It also helps that Ottman was himself clearly enthusiastic about the score, a trait that does shine through in the finished result. After so many morbid assignments through the years, who could blame the man?

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There will indeed be several characteristics of the score that will remind veteran film music collectors of Powell's considerable work in the genre; the title theme begins with a fanfare of pure Ottman optimism, though the primary melody to follow flows with the rollicking movements that have often generated so much enthusiasm in Powell's like scores. That main theme is well articulated in all of the boy robot's exploits, receiving perhaps the most memorable performance (outside of the title and suite arrangements that bookend the score) in "Saving Metro City." This theme and its surrounding structures take some time to congeal into a solid narrative flow, but the final four or five cues of the score feature better, more explicit musical climaxes and a general sense of momentum that is often condensed to just a matter of seconds in equivalent Powell efforts. The instrumental applications in Astro Boy, while taking few chances by using typical orchestral and choral elements, are better realized in this music than some of Ottman's seemingly more procedural super-hero scores. From the rhythmic flute flourishes in the opening title theme to the percussive barrage leading up to the thunderously harmonious closing of "Final Sacrifice," this score is very well rounded. Slight enhancements to the bass region are tastefully handled and the choir offers an especially lovely set of performances in the score's final cues. The London recording is flawless. A slight Japanese tone in the woodwinds of "Cora's Call" is perhaps a nod to the concept's origins. A few moments of outward humor exist; "Undercover Robots" is a throwback to the quirkiness of Goodbye Lover and the bonus inclusion of the infomercial music at the end of the album will be a crowd pleaser. Overall, Ottman has sometimes produced robust action music without a convincing heart in the past, but his impressive creation for Astro Boy is both resoundingly cohesive and emotionally satisfying. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For John Ottman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.22 (in 32 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.03 (in 17,523 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.