Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Irishchatter I wouldn't call this the best movie I've ever seen but it was enjoyable and interesting at the same time. The graphics and the drawings of the background were beautiful. It looked as if it was very real! I would say Bravo to the animators or drawers who were involved doing the movie!Anna Paquin did a mighty job playing as James Ray Steam aka Steamboy. You wouldn't think it was actually a young girl voicing the character. It's not that I'm sexist but I'm just surprised that she did a good job acting as a young boy. I suppose Steamboy looked so teen-aged so I suppose they decided to pick any girl in playing the character in order to no hear a rather deep voice. I suppose it would be a good idea too if they tried that out in the first place but there ya go! I would say this movie is good,it's just not a favorite of mine!

patrick-green I don't like Steampunk. Despite this, Steamboy seemed to be a film that would fly in the face of my dislike of this particular genre. On the cover of the DVD and in the trailers I watched, the animation looked top notch with some brilliant scenes featuring steamboats on the Thames and the Crystal Palace.However, once I started watching the movie, a problem came up. One of the first scenes in the movie depicts a failing steam machine...but why was it failing? A problem with the pressure? It was all very vague and hard to grasp, and it quickly took away a lot of the plot's appeal. Of course, the animation was great, but in my opinion great animation does not make up for a poor plot with more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese. The movie then steadily turned into a confused mish-mash involving a boy genius (whose last name was 'Steam', how imaginative), weird constructions flying in the face of the internal combustion engine and shallow, uninteresting characters who all seemed to have been dragged out of the stereotype bargain bin. Also, the people who made this movie thought it would be clever to insert Stephenson into this mess to make things more interesting.In the end, the plot proved to be the film's undoing. The entire premise collapsed into boredom, and the pretty animation was lost. All in all, Steamboy is about being pretty, with good animation and plenty of strange Steampunk designs following the rule of aesthetics and the "rule of cool". This again shows some of the flaws of the Steampunk genre and its attachment to purely aesthetic additions of cogs, valves and other contraptions, and the addition of so much stuff that the function of certain objects soon becomes obscured.

chris pontello Possible the worst Japanamation of all time. It had some good to very good animation, beginning threads of a plot worth the animation, but it fizzled. Admiditly, part of the issue is they do not really bring the viewer to the world, that is the underlying feelings of a era gone by.It is so far away in our collective consciousness it does not work well. My grandfather was born in 1896, he outlived everyone he knew everyone. He told me stories of his childhood. They were depressing on a scale that staggers the imagination at times. Could you imagine being so poor and hungry that you bought HALF of a raw egg?? They did that on streets of new york with a board and a pastry cutter. His job at age 4 was to walk along Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and pick up coal bits that fell off the coal cars behind the engine, very dangerous. Lotsa kids got killed like that. Steam boilers popped and people were horrible burned and died of infection. Disease and stink and filth were everywhere. This was downtown brooklyn or chicago or manchester etc. They gave you a taste of that, just a tad, not enough. When the Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24,1883, 2:00 PM . People closed buisinesses, they came out to walk over the bridge in total awe, BECAUSE THEY COULD. For a number of years people would do just that. They walked over water, that was unheard of. The achievement of man over water was beyond expectation. People would come and make a day of walking the bridge. Because it was mind boggling.If that was lost on many, well when they opened the Verizzano Narrows Bridge between Static island and Brooklyn, my dad loaded us into the car and we drove to NJ to visit relatives , just to go on it, we did upper roadway one way and lower roadway back, just to feel it. That is one thing they needed to give the viewer and they tried they really did but, they did not, well, not me. Next up they needed to fill you with the horror and disgust and hatred like that which was felt and directed at:Alfred Nobel, Merchant of DeathHe invented dynamite and became in todays money, a multibillionaire. He was so reviled by many as his invention just brought mo'better ways to destroy people. And the various anti capitalists of the day went at him full throttle. He eventually funded the Nobel Peace price, since he needed a way to have his name held in reverence, NOT revulsion. But the name "Merchant of Death" is well known even to this day.Unfortunately that persona and the inquests senate committees investigating where the money went, who got rich on various wars, while addressed amply I think, wasn't enough to carry the plot since the other things they did not have were too much to overcome. Since I studied euro/American history I can see the parallels, but the average person can not so it is boring. They could not/did not (for me) convey the awesomeness of New technologies for the time.Up to WWII the average person, was born grew up raised kids and died within 25 miles of their parents house. Only the destitute/starving/persecuted and the adventurous tried new things like "America". But that is only an opinion, my own. Japanamation is OK , but this one was as another gent felt, BLAH ciao chris

phantom_pixie I heard so much about this film, even though it didn't seem to good to me I decided to watch it because I heard so many good things about it.. I was just disappointed by the whole thing. I even fell asleep somewhere between the.. explosions and the explosions, don't know how long I slept but when I woke up I just didn't seemed to have missed anything. To me it seems like most of the story took place in the after-texts and the rest of the film could have been shortened to a 30 min movie. The animation was nice, but so are paintings, they are beautiful to watch and they also lack a plot. I'd rather spend my time at a museum than watch this film.