Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

MGM sci-fi flick about a young boy and his robot friend trying to stop an evil supercomputer from taking over the world. There is some invisibility in this one but it seems like it was just tacked-on to justify the title. It's certainly not important to the plot. This has no connection with the earlier Invisible Man series from Universal, either. It has somewhat of a connection to the classic Forbidden Planet, which was the first movie with Robby the Robot. Here, it's said Robby was brought from the future via time travel so there's an implication (though never stated definitely) that it's the same character from the other film. This is more of a kiddie movie than serious science fiction. It goes on longer than necessary and offers little to impress. The cast is fine, although child actor Richard Eyer seems like a poor man's Jerry Mathers. The best thing about the movie (besides Robby, of course) are the old-school computers and whatnots. Silly but charming in its way. It's no Forbidden Planet, that's for sure.

The main "feature" of this movie is watching the poor child getting the hell spanked out of him time and time again for over an hour and a half.It's hard to imagine how someone could allow that to happen. But, it did. The writer, director and actors all seem to be fine with subjecting this child to endless humiliation. And, the actors who portrayed the mother and father seem to really be getting off on it.Maybe they recruited them from Nazis who worked the extermination camps? Or, maybe Catholic priests who were taking breaks from raping children?Hard to know. But, as a child of abuse, this really sickened me. And, it shouldn't be shown, on Turner Classic Movies, or anywhere else.* (1 Out of 10 Stars)

Loose follow-up to "Forbidden Planet" sees the return of Robby the Robot in the present(1957) as he befriends a ten-year old boy named Timmy(played by Richard Eyer) whose father(played by Philip Abbott) is a Pentagon scientist who has built a super computer. It was designed to help humanity, but instead gets ideas of world conquest, as it reprograms Robby to do its bidding, which includes threatening to kill little Timmy if the authorities don't give in to its demands. Can Robby and Timmy save the Day? Exceedingly silly and unbelievable film is a total waste of time, good only for kids. Still, the unexplored subplot of Robby being taken from the future by a time-traveling scientist is more interesting than anything else in the film!

The Invisible Boy is an entry of sort in the long list of "Invisible" movies this being one of a boy, Timmy. Timmy gets to be a grand daredevil in this movie, flying in a huge kite that takes him among the clouds, almost falling to his death several times, going into outer space, having his own robot "Robbie" who seems to have all the same powers and intellect that he had in Forbidden Planet, and lastly becoming invisible! Whew, thats a lot of stuff to happen to one 10 year old in one movie but they manage to pack it all in within the first third to half (except the space part). So what happens after the first third to half? a long drawn out non Timmy picture that is worth fast forwarding and must have put the kiddies to sleep for sure who saw this in the Saturday matinée in the theaters. The ending is pretty cool along with the first half and we get to see Robbie take on a "rocket patrol" of heavily armed air force ground troops who try to stop Robbie using rifles, machine guns, bazooka's, recoil-less artillery and flame throwers (that was very cool to watch)! The dialog used by the scientists elevate this past strictly being a children's picture to one that sci fi fans, and of course all robot fans (who isn't a robot fan?), will enjoy seeing. If your tuning for the invisible factor you wont like it as the invisible bits are played for the typical invisible yucks you've seen in movies along the way of a 3 Stooges or Abbott and Costello movie and after seeing those jokes it's not funny anymore, luckily the invisible stuff lasts less then a third of the movie. I give it an elevated 7 of 10 because it's a curiosity sci fi movie, not because it's particularly all that great. Worth it to see Robbie and Timmy get into world domination troubles though!