Saturday, August 16, 2008

WALL·E: Review

Somewhere right now, the people who made Kung Fu Panda are watching WALL·E and going, "FUCK! We were so close!"
Remember when I said that Kung Fu Panda stood a real chance to take the Oscar from Pixar this year? Yeah I'd like to retract that statement now. Wow, seriously wow. WALL·E is such a departure from anything Pixar as ever done before and I absolutely adore this film.
So the movie is about WALL·E, a waste collecting robot in a future where the Earth is so polluted, humans have left the planet until WALL·E finishes cleaning up all the garbage stuff. The years alone has made WALL·E evolve into a very peculiar character. He's fascinated with the garbage he finds and tried piecing together information through the things he comes through.
One day he meets this robot EVE (who looks like a vibrator for girls) who comes down to look for plant life and WALL·E falls in love. Through some funny circumstances, he finds himself inadvertently taken back to space with EVE and get's wrapped up in a plot bigger than  himself to save mankind.
WALL·E has gotta be the cutest Disney character they have ever made. The guy is just such a goofball of love, I want to own one so that I can squeeze the life out of it. And it's also an incredibly deep character and that says a lot since we never hear WALL·E speak. Everything we learn about him is through is body language, the tone of his beeps and his eyes. I can't respect Pixar enough for being able to do all that in one tiny character without even saying a goddam word.
And there is a lot more to this film than just WALL·E. The film is such a resemblance to the Utopian sci-fi movies from the 70's where it just blows you away with the magic and the ideas in the film which are so ahead of it's time. And there's a lot of subtext references to like EVE being the dove of Noah's Ark, WALL·E being a lot like Butades and other stuff that will just bore you but is like geekgasm to me.
And the CG is really good here. It's one of the most gritty style of animation as far as Pixar goes. It's almost a lost of innocence watching the apocalyptic world of  WALL·E. This is as close as animation can possibly get to the real thing without having that uncanny valley effect.
Remember the old Disney movies that just wows people with the sheer magic of the film, well WALL·E is the first one in a long time. When they can make a movie where the first hour has no dialog whatsoever and still get across so many emotion, character development and themes, you know that this was the work of geniuses.
The only thing that I disliked about the movie was it's overenthusiastic manner of cramming as much propaganda and lessons into it. The whole movie practically screams, "Stop polluting the planet, dumb ass." and "For God sakes please get off the couch and exercise." I wouldn't mind if the message came up a few times but it just got over preached to the point where it almost became annoying.
It's too bad Kung Fu Panda came out the same year this amazing film did to. Cause I really like Kung Fu Panda but, wow WALL·E completely blows that movie out of the park!

RATING: 9/10

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