Inspired by the 1960s television cartoon created by Japanese manga/anime icon Osamu Tezuka, the film follows a pre-adolescent android in an Epcot Center-like world called Metro City that floats above an ecologically devastated Earth. The humans that live there are attended by a corps of menial slave-bots that look like they were designed by Sears. Astro, the movie’s mechanical-boy hero (Freddie Highmore), is different. “I’ve got machine guns!” he announces, upon discovering one of his many high-tech accessories. “In my butt!” While the film retains some of the DNA of the original TV series, it bears more similarity to such recent fare as “WallE” and “Transformers.” Despite a sweetly ecological message, it can get loud and moderately violent. Contains cartoon violence, a couple of bits of bathroom humor and thematic material related to the death of a child.

“Astro Boy”

PG-13, 95 minutes