The Iron Giant (DVD, 2003, Special Edition)

Director Brad Bird and the team of Warner Bros Family Entertainment took a fantastic, and influential story about friendship, love, and understanding, and made it into a phenomenally vivid and original film, full of charm, humor, and dulcet storytelling. The film is visually stunning, and the voice-acting and music are sensational. As it is, you can watch this film without the voices, and the story is still told well.
Watching this with the Incredibles, you'll notice immediately that Bird's style of animation has carried over into both forms of animation. The characters are expressive, with an older-styled flair that most films with they had. It's the kind of story that Disney tried to go for with Atlantis, but didn't hit the mark on anywhere near as many levels.
So few movies have lasted in their ability to tell a story that is appreciated on different levels for different ages. Though it is at its heart, a children's movie, it has themes that adults will understand, and appreciate, much like the celebrated story, the Iron Man. This movie should be easy for you to find copies of, and the special edition has everything from easter eggs for you to find on different menus, to featurettes and a full-length commentary that adds some depth to the understanding of the film-making process.

From the imagination of Brad Bird (The Incredibles) comes this wonderful story about friendship and identity. A strange robotic weapon of unknown origin discovers friendship when he meets a little boy, who saves his life. The robot is then awakened to the concept of deciding who he wants to be.

The first thing that needs to be said is that this is not a Disney film, and as such, there are no spontaneous musical numbers anywhere in this film. This is good if you like pure storytelling.

Your children might care more than you do that this is not a Disney film, so unless you have youngsters over the age of 9, you might find yourself watching this one on your own, which you'll probably be doing anyway! With the exception of the Pixar films, you're not going to find anything this charming from Disney.

This is absolutely one of the most wonderful animated movies to come out of Hollywood in a long, long time, and I recommend it to anyone with a heart.

If you are used to musical films churned out by Disney and other big wigs, you are in for a remarkable surprise. I'm convinced this is one of the best animated movies ever created and should be enjoyed be adults as well as children.

This poignant tale about the symbiotic relationship between a boy and a robot beautifully illustrates the power of friendship, love and ones ability to choose who they are.

I've spent numerous hours trying to teach my children that life is all about the choices we make and how that determines the type of person we become...what kind of future we have. Everyone has a choice and it's the paths we choose that show our true character. I think this movie captures this lesson admirably.

I bought this for a child's present but I decided to watch it myself first. In the next 2 days, I watched it 5 times. The plot is nearly impossible to describe. Boy finds robot in the woods, boy loses robot and then robot becomes hero doesn't really do it justice. This anti-war story set in 1957 America and with subplots concerning the communist menace and Russian space satellite superiority is about innocence and paranoia and being true to your own self. The animation is first rate, the music memorable, the all star cast provides superb voice acting. It is humorous and thought provoking at the same time. Kids will enjoy the story but adults will understand it. The only negative is the ending has some rather violent scenes with a military attack on a small town in Maine and the resulting launch of a nuclear weapon. Don't worry, it does have a happy ending.

I bought this dvd for my 4+ year old boy. He loves this movie. Like most boys he has started to be fascinated with weapons... :-( This movie presents violence in a very didactic way. I like the fact that it teaches that guns kill. The movie shows violence and its consequences in a way that children understand. The kindness of the giant is moving and well done. Usually kids see giants as violent and mighty (normally bad people); and children see "government armies" as good and saviors (normally good people even when using guns) -- here looks could be deceiving and children could clearly see that violence only hurts people no matter who has the guns.
I probably would not show this movie to a 3 year old.