THE IRON GIANT: SIGNATURE EDITION
TIFF KIDS D: Brad Bird. USA. 88 min. Sep 13, 12:45 pm TIFF Bell Lightbox 2 Sep 20, noon, Scotiabank 14. See listings. Rating: NNNN
Ahead of a long-overdue Blu-ray release, Bird’s 1999 masterwork about a lonely kid named Hogarth (voiced by Eli Marenthal) and the giant alien robot (Vin Diesel) who becomes his best friend returns to the screen in a gorgeous new restoration.
It’s still a stunner, fusing hand-drawn and digital animation to tremendous effect. Bird and Tim McCanlies’s screenplay (very loosely adapted from Ted Hughes’s children’s book) finds joy and wonder in every moment, and two brief reintegrated scenes feel like they’ve been there all along.
And if you haven’t seen it in a while, you’ll probably notice that the subplot in which Hogarth is stalked by a paranoid government agent (Christopher McDonald) plays very differently in the post-9/11 era.
