ASTRO BOY (PG, 94 mins)***
Featuring the voices of Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Bill Nighy, Kristen Bell, Sterling Beaumon, Madeline Carroll, Moises Arias, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy, Samuel L Jackson, Charlize Theron

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From an auspicious beginning in a 1951 Japanese manga comic book created by Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy has become firmly embedded in popular culture around the world.

This iconic figure takes flight in a new computer-animated adventure with a simple storyline that puts a futuristic spin on the classic tale of Pinocchio.

Dr Tenma (voiced by Cage) is a brilliant scientist working in the crowded, airborne community of Metro City under militaristic President Stone (Sutherland).

He is devoted to his son Toby (Highmore), a chip off the old block, who dies in freakish circumstances during a demonstration of a volatile dark power source called the Red Core, harnessed by Dr Elefun (Nighy).

Consumed by grief, Tenma resolves to replace his son with a super-powered robot clone implanted with Toby’s memories, which will look, sound and even behave like the offspring he lost.

Astro Boy erupts to life, powered by the Blue Core, a purely positive energy source, which must never come into contact with the Red Core.

At first Tenma is delighted, referring to Astro Boy as Toby and encouraging robot servant Orrin (Levy) to do the same.

However, Stone wants to get his hands on the Blue Core and he dispatches his robots to destroy Astro Boy.

Following a skirmish, the hero ends up on the surface of a devastated planet Earth where he meets Hamegg (Lane) and a group of abandoned children including Cora (Bell), Sludge (Beaumon), Widget (Carroll), Zane (Arias) and their robot dog, Trashcan.

Astro Boy bonds with the kids, unaware that he is actually an automaton, but someone on Earth knows his secret and will exploit the child’s powers for public spectacle in the metal-crunching Robot Games.

Blessed with slick animation and some frenetically-orchestrated action sequences, Astro Boy has plenty of eye-popping thrills for younger viewers, including a climactic showdown with a giant robot threatening Metro City.

Regrettably, director David Bowers and his team of animators seem more interested in technical might than emotion, sacrificing characterisation for another deafening explosion.

Certainly, the film doesn’t spend long enough plumbing the depths of Dr Tenma’s grief for Toby, and so our sympathy for this brilliant man only extends so far.

A surfeit of peripheral characters on planet Earth, including talking robots and the street kids, really exposes the weaknesses in the script.