This, my friends, is not going to be a kind review.

Whenever I mentioned to people that I was going to review the new Astro Boy film, their reactions were exactly the same as my reaction when I was first offered this review, namely "there's a new Astro Boy film coming out?" It never really fills one with confidence when you haven't heard of a film until days before its release, especially when it's a film of such potent pop culture and nostalgia value as Astro Boy. I mean, shit, the publicity lead in for the new Tron film is looking to be about 18 months. And that for a remake of a film that has existed for years largely as either a fringe cult offering, a mere curiosity or a Simpsons episode from the mid-90s. But this is Astro Boy, man. People grew up on this show. This is a shining memory from many people's childhoods.

Well, if that sounds like you, then can I heartily, absolutely and without equivocation suggest that you stay as far away from this film as is humanly possible? Because this film isn't just a disappointment, a la the third X-Men film's butchering of the Phoenix saga. Oh no, this is more like the rape scene from Irreversible, stretched out to an hour and a half, with your cherished childhood memories taking the place of Monica Bellucci and an anonymous Hollywood producer, who was obviously themselves never a child, doing the horrible, horrible raping.

Ah, the zesty tang of hyperbole.

But, seriously, what a cock up [pun not intended]. Basically, Astro Boy plays like something the studio threw together over the course of an idle weekend. Perhaps that's what's so insulting about it. You get the sense that they figured they were targeting young children, so maybe it didn’t actually matter if the movie was a bit crap. And, hell, you could almost forgive it if it was simply bad. But what really grates, what really gets to me is that the film just feels so completely and utterly passionless, empty and wasteful; a generic, studio-produced piece of tripe that doesn't even succeed at being a generic, studio-produced piece of tripe. From top to bottom, every element of this film is worthy of scorn and derision. It’s as if no-one cared at all. I mean, in some ways, it’s almost too vapid to properly criticise... but, well, here goes.

*deep breath*

The narrative, or rather the sequence of disjointed events dressed up as a narrative, feels like it was the product of a preliminary brainstorming session from which they decided to use every, single under-developed idea they wrote down. A remarkably large amount actually happens, but every major event that occurs feels like it was pulled from a different draft of the script and just jammed in for good measure. In 90 minutes, there’s a power hungry President, an upcoming election, a tension between Blue (good) and Red (bad) energies, a new uncontrollable technology, splits within the Ministry of Science, a planetary surface being used as a scrap heap, an orphanage/robot coliseum manager, a pack of friendly orphans, a trashcan/dog companion, three separate forms of comic relief (see below), the emotional turmoil of Toby/Astro Boy himself, a resurrected robot that ultimately saves the day, a best friend/pre-pubescent love interest and a climax of such unmitigated and casual mass destruction that I can only imagine Osama Tezaku, shaped by the horrors of WWII as he was, would be inclined to vomit in rage.

As a result of all this clutter, Astro Boy reels and swerves from slapstick to pathos like your drunken Uncle Jim in the middle of a confused anecdote about his time in 'Nam. The film starts by trying to convey the enormity of the existential angst and tragedy that underscored the original Astro Boy, but tries to do so within the first twenty minutes, whilst also maintaining a jaunty, kid-friendly vibe throughout. The result is a deeply unsettling emotional shallowness wherein the 10 year old Astro Boy seems to be able to get over the triple tragedies of being disowned by his father, being declared an enemy of the state and discovering that he’s a FUCKING ROBOT after only five odd minutes of basic banter with some welcoming orphans. If I was Dr Tenma, I’d be hurt. Maybe robots really can’t feel emotion.

Not that the slapstick is particularly adept either. The "comic relief" switches back and forth from a trio of hapless robot revolutionaries to a pair of window-cleaning robots, to a flamboyantly gay domestic servant robot, all of whom may well have been written in during post-production so poorly are they integrated with the rest of the story. Also, they're cringefully unfunny. Literally. I felt physically uncomfortable watching these computer animated and completely unreal characters vainly wrangle with the concept of humour. Jar Jar Binks wishes he was this crap.

But then there’s the dialogue. Oh, the dialogue. Watching Astro Boy, you get the distinct impression that whoever they found to actually write this celebration of cinematic dysfunction was either a) an ESL student working from a banged-up pocket dictionary with a number of the letters missing; or b) a remarkably advanced machine that has learnt how to write dialogue from a manual. I mean sure they're triumphing over adversity and all, but that doesn't change the fact that these characters attack conversation as if struggling to construct a Duplo set. Giant, gormless slabs of cliche knock against one another haphazardly and very rarely do they seem to come together in a way that would be defined by most people as constituting a "conversation". They're just expository lines being hurled clumsily into the abyss like so many poorly thrown housebricks. Some examples:

When getting through his surprisingly rapid grieving process, Dr Tenma says of Astro Boy "I wanted him to be an exact replica of Toby". Really? Then why the fuck did you give him rocket boots Doctor? Did you not think that at some point he might crack wise to the fact he now had rockets instead of feet? Were you just going to pass it off as one those things that happen to kids as they enter puberty? "Oh yes, the rocket shoe phase, don't worry, that's completely normal. You what? You drilled your way through a mountain with your bare hands? Yes, completely on the level. Oh, um, don't freak out if your ass grows cannons at any point. That's happening to all the other boys. They just don’t talk about it."

Then, after his father has spurned him, the kindly Dr Elefun tells Astro that he "needs to find his place in the world". Which seems like a bit of an understatement when, as a ten year old boy, you've just been kicked out of your house and disowned by your only parent. Twenty minutes later, Astro repeats that thought verbatim to another character, saying "I guess I just need to find my place in the world". Then at the end when Astro has saved the day and everybody loves him again, Dr Elefun comes back and says "well I guess now you've found your place in the world". No shit, doc. Look, I know this is a kid's film, but perhaps the moral could afford to be conveyed without relying so heavily upon the miracle cures of CTRL-C and CTRL-V.

Meanwhile, the animation is glossy, unnerving, disjointed and heartless, which serves as a rather apt metaphor for the movie itself. Moreover, the film has been put together in such an artless way that it often feels hard to work out exactly how different characters stand in relation to each other in the same room. When you’re already grappling with the sort of overloaded, obstacle course narrative that Astro Boy is serving up to you, the last thing you need is to be surprised by the sudden appearance of character in your left periphery.

Also, whoever animated it has a serious nose fetish. Those proboscises were the things of nightmare.

But, with all of that said (and I assure you, I could go on), this is a film that makes you glad to be alive, in a strange way. A film of such irretrievable and unconscionable awfulness that you leave the cinema enervated, righteous anger coursing through your veins. Burning questions ricochet around your head. Questions like: how did this happen? Who bankrolled it? Who thought this was going to be a good idea? Who destroyed it? How did anyone convince A-List actors such as Nicolas Cage, Bill Nighy, and Nathan Lane (who, as the vile Hamegg, is ironically the only vaguely endearing character in the whole thing) to sign onto this steaming mountain of shit? What brand of glorified, type-writer equipped monkey wrote this steaming mountain of shit? And how did anybody involved in the production of this steaming mountain of shit - in all seriousness and with a complete understanding of the mechanics of a Hollywood career - actually deign to put their real names to it?

The mind truly does boggle.

This isn't a rated review, but suffice to say, if it was, the mathematical concept of zero would be insufficient to express my disdain.

Astro Boy opens in cinemas on Thursday, October 15.
You can view the Astro Boy movie trailer here on TheVine.