The movie doesn’t even premiere in my town for another 20 minutes or so but the reviews are pouring in and apparently Astro Boy is average at best and preachy at worst. Now, don’t take this as a hard as stone fact. There is always room for other opinions but in my adventures about the internet, I have found enough evidence to suggest this is going to be an incredibly depressing weekend for Imagi Entertainment. To start with, the movie has already disappeared from the charts in Japan only a week after it premiered. In its first week, the movie opened at number 10 before disappearing from the charts entirely. The movie isn’t being universally panned (I included a glowing review snippet below) but if Imagi was hoping to see Astro Boy be the one that saved them and their investors, they better hope McDonalds sells a lot of Happy Meals. I plan to see the movie this weekend but something tells me that I’ll be attempting to pay matinee prices.

Here are a couple of my favorites from what I saw while surfing around today:

Roger Ebert said “Has market research discovered our children are all laboring with attention deficits and can only absorb so many story elements before brightly colored objects distract them with deafening combat? Still, Astro Boy is better than most of its recent competitors, such as “Monsters vs. Aliens” and “Kung Fu Panda.”

Vic Holtreman at Screen Rant: “I think my daughter’s friend summed it up best: The best thing about the end of the movie is that it meant it was over.”

And to be entirely fair; proof that people who love this movie do exist:

Derek Padula at Epoch Times: “Astro Boy successfully captures the spirit and mentality of the genre with a young, naïve, yet, optimistic hero, engaging plot lines, solid character development, and titanic battles between opposing forces. While it’s not an overnight classic, the film will stand the test of time.”

Will any of you be checking out the movie this weekend? Share your thoughts, praises and criticisms in the comments.