Wall-E Review

On Saturday night, I was able to catch the new Pixar film Wall-E. I have to say that it is difficult to classify. On one hand, it was absolutely brilliant, on par with some of my favorite films. It had heart, beautiful animation, interesting characters, and a very ambitious story for an animated film. On the other hand, I lost slight interest towards the third quarter of the film when it lost sight of the love story and focused on other things.

The first third of the film was probably my favorite. Largely without dialog, this part of the film follows our robot hero as he performs his mundane daily tasks of compacting garbage. Completely alone except for his tiny mechanical cockroach companion, Wall-E is not unlike Aerial from the little Mermaid: He cherishes things from a different world that considered them trash - zippo lighters, sporks, Christmas lights. His cockroach friend has the fundamental characteristic of all cockroaches - they're indestructible. Much like Dory in Finding Nemo playing off of the conception that fish have a very short term memory span, Pixar again uses the most memorable feature of a creature for character development.

In the year of Wall-E, all of humanity is aboard a spaceship out in the cosmos and has been reduced to being overweight orbs. Too fat to move, and completely incapable without technological help, they no longer engage in direct face-to-face contact, but rather talk via video screen. This is one of many nods to that retched steaming pile, 2001. Others are the captain of the ship consulting with a HAL-looking bot to assist in running the ship and the main 2001 theme being cued when the shape of the rising captain resembles the giant black obelisk.

The adventure continues to surround Wall-E's organic prize and culminates with a very heartfelt final act. Since I saw the film on Saturday, the film has been stuck in my head. I've constantly been able to drum up a scene filled with creativity and originality that has made me laugh. I guess that's the best compliment to pay to a film - it is entertaining and is deep enough to make you think at the same time.

So, while Hollywood serves up comic book film after comic book film, Pixar keeps churning out original material that is at such a high level, it makes you wonder if the only creative people in Hollywood work at Pixar.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Presto, the short that plays before Wall-E. By far my favorite short of all of the Pixar films, this story of a magician battling his bunny is worth the price of admission. It fondly reminded me of the old Looney Toons cartoons. The protagonist, the way the characters moved, and the slapstick humor seemed straight out of the classic Warner shorts. Two thumbs way up.