Wall-E A+

Last Sunday I saw Wall-E and I doubt that I will see a better film this year. I'm trying to think of my favorite films from last year and as far as I can recall it tops every one of them. I must say I was fairly well shocked at my reaction to this film. I thought the trailers looked fun, but I really didn't think I would really connect with it. When I think of Pixar the company behind probably 90% of the greatest animation in the last decade or more, I wonder why I thought Wall E would some how fall below the others. Maybe it's because it's about robots, maybe I was expecting a manipulating romance about characters I wouldn't care about if they weren't contriving reasons for me to care. Whatever my reasons I suspect that that theory of lowered expectations would have come into play, would have that is if the film needed them, but it doesn't. I'm not going to spoiler the movie for those who haven't seen it. I also don't want to overpraise it, though again I doubt the film could fall victim to that phenomenon either.

There are so many levels on which Wall-E succeeds. Visually it is as astonishing as anything animation I have ever seen. there is a scene in which Wall-E is crushed by an entire Grocery store's worth of shopping carts within the scene focus shits the camera jostles and there is something so real about it that it was amazing to me not that they could compose and exicute such a shot but that they thought to, that they realized this shot filmed as it is.... but wait it isn't filmed is it it's all designed in a computer, but it feels like it's filmed. Take Toy Story for example, that has some really great animation in it but it always looks like a cartoon. This film begins to look like a cartoon only after they arrive on a ship in space that contains the human race or what it has become. In other words they wait until we have completely bought into the reality of this world before they remind us it's a cartoon, but that doesn't break the magic it amplify's the wonder at what they have done.

Character wise I need to be careful because this could easily lead to spoilers. I'll say that not since E.T. has something so asthetically uncute been so endearing. The heart of this character and his personality shine through this robot exterior and this animated robot who resembles a human less than any other robot I can think of comes off as one of the most fully realized characters I've seen this year. In fact Wall-E is one of the most human characters in film history.

Speaking of humans, again while trying to avoid spoilerville, the humans in this film mirror our deapest laws and show us what could easily happen to us as a species. But, the film also shows what is greatest about the human spirit. This is a film that isn't content to give us one lesson to take away like most animated films do this is a film bursting with ideas and themes. It is not only a great animated film but a great science Fiction film as well, for it does what alll great science fiction does it uses the distance of time and space to address the world in which we live now.


I don't want to over inflate everyone's expectations, but I laughed, I cried, it was a part of me. A+