Brad Bird’s non-digital animation of the 1968 children’s story has an irresistible simplicity and charm

A warm welcome back for Brad Bird’s sweet-natured animation from 1999, an adaptation of Ted Hughes’s 1968 children’s story The Iron Man. Bird transplanted the story from England to 1950s smalltown America: a metal-eating iron giant from outer-space crashlands in rural Maine, biting lumps out of automobiles and power stations; he looks like every red-scare Twilight Zone fantasy come true. But the Iron Giant is scared and lonely and a little kid called Hogarth becomes his only friend. Watching this again 17 years after its original release, I savoured again the resemblances to Spielberg, Wilde and Brian Forbes’s Whistle Down the Wind. The Iron Giant predates Bird’s 2003 gem The Incredibles and its non-digital animated style has simplicity and charm; in 2016, it looks closer to the Japanese tradition. A lovely film to revisit.