[Movie Review] WALL-E
I sat down to write my review of Pixar’s latest release and, more so then when I had to write my opinions about The Dark Knight or Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I found myself really struggling. I mean I’d made notes on a pad of paper as I sat through it but when I read them back I just found that I’d written random words over and over (research with a dictionary reveals they all essentially mean the same thing!). Then there’s the aspect of just HOW honest do I be with you, the member of this here Stale Popcorn community? Do I talk truthfully and openly about the full impact that this film had on me? Or do I “man-up” and just paste over the “emotional impact” stuff and talk about “action sequences” and the like?
On top of all that, in the shadow of my reviews for The Dark Knight and Hellboy II, I’m suffering a crisis of confidence - feeling as if I’m unable to intelligently and cohesively get across to you the full extent of these films’ brilliance. There’s better reviews of Pixar’s latest film, WALL-E, out there then the one under my name. One of them is on this very site, to be found right here! There’ll be better come along in the future too.
In fact, let me not even bother trying to review this. Let me just list every word I had written down regarding this film during my viewing experience and then let me admit, embarrassingly, what impact it had on me. Then let’s get the hell out of here so, if you’re really that interested in seeking critical opinion on this flick, you can head on over to Roger Ebert’s website or AICN or whatever floats your boat!
I think what makes WALL-E particularly worthy of the term “masterpiece” is that, going into it, there is more chance of this failing to work or come across as a little pretentious then there is of this connecting so massively with pretty much every single person of every age on the entire planet. One of the things that smarted a little with Ratatouille, a film I otherwise thoroughly enjoyed (you can find my review here), was the lack of real, solid voice work in the style I had become accustomed to with Pixar’s movies. Wall-E has a skeleton-crewed voice cast on show here (Jeff Garlin, Sigourney Weaver) and pretty much the first two acts is dialogue-free. Most Pixar movies, nay all of their movies, have a concept that intrigues and excites me from the minute I first hear of it. WALL-E neither “intrigued” nor “excited” me when I first heard of it. In fact I honestly thought that this was where they were going to disappear up their own anuses! On top of all of that, the mere design of the character of Wall-E was met with a mixture of “M’eh” and “So it’s a mini Johnny Five?” from me. Even when the initial reviews first started coming in for this movie I rather cynically thought “Are we reviewing the film or Pixar’s unarguably majestic history?”
I wasn’t hoping Pixar would fail with this movie. I just questioned whether it could actually be as truly great as what everyone was making it out to be. Somehow I’d forgotten that this was a Pixar movie and from looking at what they’ve given us thus far, it’d appear that this is a studio within a studio who are absolutely incapable of making a bad movie. Even their alleged “misfires” (Cars and A Bug’s Life in my opinion) are nothing less than good. These are the people who give us a world that includes toys trying to cope with road trips and issues of abandonement, forcibly retired superheroes in suburbia itching for a comeback to their days of glory, talking rats with a penchant for avant garde cookery, two fish playing within the conventions of a “buddy movie” and a world of loveable monsters just trying to do an honest days work!
WALL-E, to quote the notes of feelings that I made during my viewing experience, is wonderous to say the least. It is also marvellous, fantastic, terrific, tremendous, grand, remarkable, extraordinary and joyous. I loved every minute of it. I was converted from the very second Wall-E appeared on screen and it stuck with me and continued to move me even when it went in a direction I resolutely did not want it to go. I can understand why the latter part of the second act and most of the third (i.e. the “human stuff”) is frustrating to a lot of people. It’s because you’ve become so enamoured towards the very element you were so suspcious of (two dialogue-free robots falling in love) that you want to see it grow and develop even further.
It’s extremely brave and commendable of Pixar to give us WALL-E, opening and finding its feet as it does with little to no dialogue or ANY of the safety elements we’ve become used to in one of their movies. As a lot of critics are suggesting though, maybe the truly ‘brave’ element would have been to stay invested in this style. Anyone who isn’t completely smitten with this film and its style within the first fifteen minutes is the sort of person you’d not really consider human anyway, but no sooner are we head over heels in love with WALL-E as it is, the Pixar crew pull us out and put us into a more “conventional” movie.
It’s a very minor grumble though because, in its complete form, WALL-E is truly something to behold! It’s absolutely majestic and it is such a ‘bar-raiser’ within the realms of the animation genre that, if I was those behind another ‘talking animal movie’ (Hello Space Chimps!) or a rushed out, unnecessary sequel (You have every reason to blush Madagascar 2!) I would just cut my losses, shelve your productions and bow down in front of this latest Pixar offering.
Kung Fu Panda was an admittedly excellent experience. But there’s no denying it was Dreamworks’ animated entry to the Blockbuster “Silly” Season. WALL-E is something more. WALL-E is a film that will stand the test of time. We can lie to ourselves all we like about the Disney back-catalogue, but if we’re truly honest, there’s only a smattering of truly audacious, timeless films within their cannon and the majority of them come pre-1980 (there is of course exceptions - The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King, Beauty & The Beast for example). Pixar, themselves, though have very nearly delivered a masterpiece with every release whilst other studios these days put out fare that is more reminscent of post-1980s Disney handdrawn efforts.
WALL-E transcends pretty much anything and everything you have seen in the animated genre before. It genuinely broke my heart. I haven’t sobbed like this through a viewing experience since the local police made me watch the CCTV of me running around my local shopping centre naked, flapping my very tiny penis in the direction of startled shoppers! It (as in WALL-E, not the CCTV footage!) made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me gasp. In parts it made me genuinely forget that I was watching an animated movie.
I’ve been having a bit of a tough time in my personal life presently and what was most amazing about encountering WALL-E wasn’t that it turned every suspicion I had into a positive, nor that it was a really rather brilliant piece of cinema, but that during the film and for a good few hours afterwards I forgot about every single thing burdening me and just walked about with a massive grin on my face, so thankful that I had been lucky enough to experience this film!
You cannot ask for any more from a film then that can you? Especially one about a little robot who dares to love!
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6 Responses to “[Movie Review] WALL-E”
“Eva!”
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO cute!
Surely it’s not right to mention a ‘penis’ around what sounds like such a lovely film???
Regular readers of my work will know that not only mentioning penis/vagina/all things sexual in a Disney/Pixar review is somewhat my staple around these parts but it is also the least offensive thing I do (check out my review for Southland Tales or There Will Be Blood to see me on “full offense”) lol.
Maybe another day
am still just getting to grips with the world of reviews. Besides I might need my dictionary, vagina??
Yeah, but depends on the dictionary you’re using. Try looking under F for “Front Bottom” if you’re struggling!
Sorry my dictionary only deals with one word at a time
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