by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

You'd think that reducing the size and contents of a complicated mechanical contraption by fully a quarter would streamline the sucker, making it function faster, smoother and more effectively. Well, if the chop job perpetrated on Steamboy is any indication, the opposite is in fact true.

To call Steamboy "long awaited" and "highly anticipated" would constitute compound understatement. It's the new film from Katsuhiro Otomo, a giant of Japanese animation best known, of course, for creating Akira, the film that almost exclusively dragged anime out of the realm of the nerds and into the common consciousness of North Americans.

Aside from the triptych Memories (of which he only directed a third) and the adaptation of manga legend Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis, Otomo has been off the radar for ages. Given his track record, his return is an important one. With Steamboy, Otomo dives into a genre of revisionist science fiction called "steampunk," already worked over by writers like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and, with the pithy League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic, eh, not the shitty movie), comics scribe Alan Moore. Invariably set in the Victorian era, steampunk explores the idea of a technological explosion driven not by electricity but by steam power, and how it might have played out against the political, cultural and sexual tensions of the day.

The steampunk genre has certainly been better handled in the past, but it's never looked better than it does in Steamboy. Otomo's obsession with massive mountains of technology, mind-boggling in their intricacy and rendered with eye-scorching precision, is well served by the setting. Things kick off when Manchester mite Ray gets his hands on a powerful new steam-engine core that's at the centre of a battle between his dad, grandpa and assorted well-dressed miscreants. Before long, the Thames is littered with scrapped vessels, firearms of all shapes and calibres are going off and a gigantic floating castle has left half of London flattened or frozen.

Pretty dramatic stuff, no? Too bad that isn't at all reflected in either the American voice-overs or the film's recalibrated pacing. A full 23 minutes were hacked out of the Japanese original, and as was suggested above, this doesn't help the film's flow. Rather, it instills a clumsiness and confusion in the proceedings, as characters pop up where they shouldn't logically be and plot turns arrive without explanation. Dumbing down, indeed. Furthermore, the voices provided for the English-language release (by Patrick Stewart, Alfred Molina and others) come across tin-eared and distant, uninspired by the material they're working with.

Crappy voice-overs also blighted the original American release of Akira, some may remember. And like Akira and later Metropolis, Steamboy also suffers from an indulgence of Otomo's that can't be blamed on U.S. studios - his trademarked bombastic climax. Inevitably, as the apocalyptic collapse of over-extended technology roars and crashes around them, two central characters will wallow in some pompous, blowhard philosophical debate. Look, introducing complex dialectics into what is generally regarded as kiddy fare is indeed a bold gesture. But the middle of an earth-shaking catastrophe is hardly the place for points and rebuttals.

All in all, the contraption that is Steamboy does function, if in an awkward and incompetent manner. However, it might ultimately be better enjoyed in the form of a lavish coffee-table book, full of exquisite images to be pored over, rather than via the motion-picture medium.

Steamboy opens at Cinéma du Parc Friday, April 8

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