Film Review: ‘Stand by Me Doraemon’

What’s blue and white and read all over? That would be Doraemon, a time-traveling robot cat from the 22nd century who ranks as the all-time most popular comicbook (or manga) character among Japanese kids. Instantly recognizable with his bubble head and huge half-moon smile, Doraemon is bigger than Big Bird in Japan, where a preschool-targeted computer-animated feature, “Stand by Me Doraemon,” has been a massive hit among fans, reverently rehashing the character’s origin story and most popular adventures. Attractive to behold, yet bland as a stack of red-bean pancakes, the pic has earned $78 million since its release on Aug. 8 — impressive, yet still just half the domestic haul of most Miyazaki toons. First unveiled at the Tokyo Film Festival, the English-language version could do surprise biz (especially on homevideo) in the States, where Disney XD helped popularize Doraemon by airing the 2005 anime series this past summer. The plot of the feature combines details from several different episodes, while the new dub — overseen by Bang Zoom! Entertainment — features the same (mostly grating) voice actors and Anglo-friendly tweaks developed for the show, including Westernized names for the characters and many of the gadgets the grinning cyber-cat brings with him from the future. That means American kids who’ve been watching “Doraemon” on TV will have no trouble adapting to the movie, which marks another heavyweight collaboration between vfx gurus Takashi Yamazaki and Ryuichi Yagi (pioneers of computer animation in Japan, having previously co-directed 2011’s “Friends: Naki of Monster Island”). Here, the duo upgrades the series’ hand-drawn anime style — all clean lines and bright colors — to a robust CG aesthetic that falls somewhere between Pixar, with its warm, diffuse lighting and gummy skin textures, and “Jimmy Neutron,” whose big-eyed, bobble-headed characters look as though they’ve been pumped full of air. In Japan, the pic was released in stereoscopic 3D, and though the Tokyo fest screened it “flat,” that extra dimension could help break a U.S. theatrical release out of the arthouse circuit to which most foreign toons are confined. So, just what is Doraemon? The big blue cat (performed by Mona Marshall) is basically the best friend a clumsy, lazy and all-around hopeless kid like Noby (Johnny Yong Bosch) could ask for. Popping up through Noby’s desk drawer one random afternoon, Doraemon announces that he’s been sent back in time by Noby’s great-great-grandson (Max Mittelman) to spare him the bad marriage and even worse future that awaits if someone doesn’t take drastic measures. In the show, that proves to be an ongoing challenge, since the supremely uncoordinated kid is constantly getting into trouble. For the sake of the film, however, all can potentially be solved by addressing the franchise’s million-yen question: namely, whether Noby will end up with Sue (Cassandra Morris), the cute oval-eyed girl who’s always hanging around. Getting the