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| STEAMBOY (2004) - PG-13
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ReviewScore: 65 out of 100
SBD Star Rating:
by Lew Irwin
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 Many critics suggest that the Japanese hand-drawn animated film Steamboy presents some very adult ideas very well, but runs out of steam near the end. (Both an English-language version, featuring voices by Anna Paquin, Alfred Molina, and Patrick Stewart, and the original Japanese version -- some 23 minutes longer -- are being released in about 36 theaters today.) Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times describes it as a "noisy, eventful and unsuccessful venture into Victorian-era science fiction, animated by a modern Japanese master." At the end, he writes, director Katsuhiro Otomo appears to abandon his story and fill the screen with "wonderfully executed but pointless and repetitive kinetic energy." Bruce Westbrook in the Houston Chronicle also faults the "tangled tale". The plot, he writes, "gets lost in the calamity. It's often unclear who's fighting whom and for what purpose." Nevertheless, he concludes, "in visuals alone, Steamboy gets the job done. Its action couldn't have been much more thrilling if done entirely by computer, or shot in costly live-action." And Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times also expresses an ambivalent reaction to the film, writing: "A sometimes stirring adventure story and visual treat with its lush, painterly backgrounds and some virtuoso sequences, it's a stunning-to-look-at film marred by a less than searing pace and some narrative incoherence." |
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