WALL-E Review
First, if you haven't already seen WALL-E, go watch it now.
Now-now-now-now-nownownow.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooow.
I'll wait, honest.
No, I won't. Let's just say I haven't tried this hard (and failed) to hold back from crying at a movie in a good long while. :)
I have to report WALL-E as a cinematic success, thank goodness. It pleased me so to see Pixar return to the fundamentals of quality acting and story. As my brother and I discussed its quality in contrast with Pixar's three previous movies, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille - the first I found only reasonably good but the latter two quite below what I had expected of Pixar - I realized where these diverge from the rest: Perspective.
Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc. and WALL-E, they tell all of these stories from their namesake's perspective and yet still from within a very human world. They all have human action as their plot impetus, be it a move, a kidnapping, or just the leaving of an incredible mess. We can identify with these events and these settings as our own and we find ourselves (the audience) affected by our own effects on these shared worlds. At the same time, however, they present a unique window (or door) into our own lives and force us to view and examine the human experience in ways that human actors and concerns simply can't allow, thereby granting a piercing (and emotionally resonant) new perspective into ourselves.
The Incredibles, respectful in its own right, manages less poorly than its two immediate successors by also taking the above route. However, it did not go far enough in only using special humans instead of non-humans and because of this it suffers from an over-familiarity that breeds intellectual and emotional complacency. The movie probably has no actual superheroes among it audiences, but it certainly has countless actual insurance salesmen, not to mention stay-at-home moms and seemingly average kids who can thereby take their cinematic counterparts' perspective at face-value. Even going in, everyone has numerous expectations and preconceived notions about such characters and, therefore, has little if any conscious need to explain their behavior ("oh, kids will be kids after all"). The same does not apply to a garbage-collecting robot. Why has he been collecting sporks, what motivates him each day to clean up, and why the heck does he like "Hello, Dolly"? Unless you've lived around WALL-Es before now, and this seems unlikely, you have to ask yourself these questions about the little guy (and about others, for a change).
Cars, unlike all the other movies, takes place in the cars' world and not our own. Here, the vehicles simply replace people and leave us wondering how their odd driver-less universe could function in a terrible blow to the suspension of disbelief. Unfortunately for the animators, the choice of cars also places a huge inherent limit on their ability to act. Whereas even the characters of WALL-E and EVE have a few digits and limited limbs for manipulating their world and expressing body language in an abstracted human form, the design of the vehicles leaves the performance with nothing but - at best - stub-armed giant heads . That does not exactly make the most pleasant mental image, now does it?
Ratatouille, much like The Incredibles, also leaves the audience far too close to the human world. Remy's wholly inexplicable ability to control Linguini through the latter's hair - thereby making the mouse an immediate and direct participant in human affairs - exemplifies the movie's failure to properly separate the perspective of the rats from our own. My mother's own recent identification of Linguini as the protagonist instead of Remy also provides the perfect anectode. It makes more sense to describe the movie as one about humans and little, furry humans than as one about rats, as all external appearances would otherwise suggest.
All three of these movies also suffered from entirely too much dialogue. Not only did the characters talk quite a bit (less so in The Incredibles), they often whined about their problems to the exclusion of interesting, non-annoying behavior. Try watching these three again while keeping a mental tally of how often a character complains about their situation. Then, compare this to the robot WALL-E, who says perhaps less than fifty words in the entire movie. He doesn't fret or fuss about his - by far - rather terrible lot in life. He exchanges no more than several words with actual humans. Instead, he goes out and does what he has to do and simply gets it done, and we love him for it. Indeed, I'm actually starting to tear up again just thinking about it, and that should say enough. :)
Peace out.
Now-now-now-now-nownownow.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooow.
I'll wait, honest.
No, I won't. Let's just say I haven't tried this hard (and failed) to hold back from crying at a movie in a good long while. :)
I have to report WALL-E as a cinematic success, thank goodness. It pleased me so to see Pixar return to the fundamentals of quality acting and story. As my brother and I discussed its quality in contrast with Pixar's three previous movies, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille - the first I found only reasonably good but the latter two quite below what I had expected of Pixar - I realized where these diverge from the rest: Perspective.
Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc. and WALL-E, they tell all of these stories from their namesake's perspective and yet still from within a very human world. They all have human action as their plot impetus, be it a move, a kidnapping, or just the leaving of an incredible mess. We can identify with these events and these settings as our own and we find ourselves (the audience) affected by our own effects on these shared worlds. At the same time, however, they present a unique window (or door) into our own lives and force us to view and examine the human experience in ways that human actors and concerns simply can't allow, thereby granting a piercing (and emotionally resonant) new perspective into ourselves.
The Incredibles, respectful in its own right, manages less poorly than its two immediate successors by also taking the above route. However, it did not go far enough in only using special humans instead of non-humans and because of this it suffers from an over-familiarity that breeds intellectual and emotional complacency. The movie probably has no actual superheroes among it audiences, but it certainly has countless actual insurance salesmen, not to mention stay-at-home moms and seemingly average kids who can thereby take their cinematic counterparts' perspective at face-value. Even going in, everyone has numerous expectations and preconceived notions about such characters and, therefore, has little if any conscious need to explain their behavior ("oh, kids will be kids after all"). The same does not apply to a garbage-collecting robot. Why has he been collecting sporks, what motivates him each day to clean up, and why the heck does he like "Hello, Dolly"? Unless you've lived around WALL-Es before now, and this seems unlikely, you have to ask yourself these questions about the little guy (and about others, for a change).
Cars, unlike all the other movies, takes place in the cars' world and not our own. Here, the vehicles simply replace people and leave us wondering how their odd driver-less universe could function in a terrible blow to the suspension of disbelief. Unfortunately for the animators, the choice of cars also places a huge inherent limit on their ability to act. Whereas even the characters of WALL-E and EVE have a few digits and limited limbs for manipulating their world and expressing body language in an abstracted human form, the design of the vehicles leaves the performance with nothing but - at best - stub-armed giant heads . That does not exactly make the most pleasant mental image, now does it?
Ratatouille, much like The Incredibles, also leaves the audience far too close to the human world. Remy's wholly inexplicable ability to control Linguini through the latter's hair - thereby making the mouse an immediate and direct participant in human affairs - exemplifies the movie's failure to properly separate the perspective of the rats from our own. My mother's own recent identification of Linguini as the protagonist instead of Remy also provides the perfect anectode. It makes more sense to describe the movie as one about humans and little, furry humans than as one about rats, as all external appearances would otherwise suggest.
All three of these movies also suffered from entirely too much dialogue. Not only did the characters talk quite a bit (less so in The Incredibles), they often whined about their problems to the exclusion of interesting, non-annoying behavior. Try watching these three again while keeping a mental tally of how often a character complains about their situation. Then, compare this to the robot WALL-E, who says perhaps less than fifty words in the entire movie. He doesn't fret or fuss about his - by far - rather terrible lot in life. He exchanges no more than several words with actual humans. Instead, he goes out and does what he has to do and simply gets it done, and we love him for it. Indeed, I'm actually starting to tear up again just thinking about it, and that should say enough. :)
Peace out.