In this animated adaptation of Ted Hughes's Cold War fable, a giant alien robot (voiced by Vin Diesel) crash-lands near the small town of Rockwell, Maine, in 1957. Exploring the area, a local nine-year-old boy, Hogarth (Eli Marienthal), discovers the robot, and soon forms an unlikely friendship with him. When paranoid government agent Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) becomes determined to destroy the robot, Hogarth and beatnik Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick Jr.) must do what they can to save the misunderstood machine.