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Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

This is one of those reviews that’s kind of easy to write but at the same time kinda hard. Easy because I know exactly what I thought of it, hard because it’s all been said up to a month previously by other people, lol. As you probably have heard, this is pretty much one of the best movies of the year, it’s practically unanimous, and I’m glad to say that for once I agree with such a widespread view.

It’s kind of crazy to think that I’ve now seen every part of this trilogy in the cinema and even when I saw the first one, I wasn’t exactly a kid at 15. I remember taking my sister to see it, I remember loving the music (I was into all Disney music bigtime at the time) but probably more than anything revelling in the sheer hi-techery of the whole thing (“the whole movie was made on a computer!!”)

When Toy Story 2 was released, I forget what level of anticipation I really had for it. I was in the middle of college and pretty much high on Disney after Tarzan (I’d end up doing my final dissertation on Disney). What I remember is badly wanting my own Jessie doll after the movie, her story being the one that really resonated most with me.

I saw the first part again when it was re-released in 3D… part two never made it to our cinema in that form, or I just missed it, but these are movies that are always fresh in my mind. The 3D worked, I thought, pretty well in that re-release, but more than anything it was just awesome to see it on a huge screen again, and projected digitally. It felt strangely pure or something (as opposed to, say, a 70mm oldie being projected digitally).

I didn’t necessarily doubt this installment would be as great as people were saying (I’d seen the trailer and it really boded well on the emotional front). But having recently seen that first one and once again realise just how perfect it is, on top of the wonders that Pixar have given us even in the 11 years since part 2, I didn’t put my expectations too high.

Well I’ve seen Toy Story 3 twice now… first in a dodgy download version because I simply needed to see it before I read too much about it and spoiled it for myself. I trusted, as I always do, that if the movie was as good as people were saying, the quality of the presentation would not make a huge difference to the story, and I wasn’t wrong. Like many people, I bawled not just like a baby but like someone with serious mental problems LOL.

This movie has some serious emotional weight, like the most recent of Pixar’s productions Wall•E and Up. What’s different here, however, is how those emotions are spread throughout the picture. There are two intense emotional beats towards the end of the movie, but the melancholic undertones are there right from the moment (after a “fantasy” opening similar to the way the first two movies open) we re-enter Andy’s bedroom, through the POV of his mom holding a video camera.

I won’t talk about those two parts at the end, except to say that they worked just as well on my flat laptop screen as they did in enormous 3D. My opinion of 3D remains the same as I think I’ve said before, and it’s just exactly the same as my opinion of seeing movies on the big screen in general. It’s always nice to see movies larger than life, but it’s simply not always possible. Almost all of us have more favourite movies that we’ve never seen on the big screen than ones that we have, so I’m pretty sure we can all agree that if a movie is good enough it doesn’t necessarily need a big screen projection. It’s nice, it adds to the experience, it immerses you more, but it doesn’t change the quality of the film.

I’m still only giving the movie 4 hearts right now because I’m remembering the original and how absolutely perfect that was right down to the screenplay structure etc, and I feel like to a certain extent those massive emotional punches at the end throw this instalment off-balance in a similar way to those last two Pixar productions I mentioned (though by nowhere near as much… plus they made me cry a lot more). I’m in near total agreement however with those calling the trilogy as it stands one of the best trilogies of all time. The consistency over 15 years really is incredible, not to mention the sheer uniqueness of this world… and while I’ve really focussed like everyone else on the huge emotional impact of this one, it has just as much excitement, humour, thrills and invention as the others.

I wanted to say something about Jessie but I can’t find anywhere above to slip it in lol. Like I said I had a huge crush on Jessie after the second movie, and she had the big emotional moment of that movie that really made me love it most, in her backstory with Emily (cleverly echoed here in Lotso’s story; though Lotso of course reacts very differently to being left behind). I had actually almost forgotten how much I loved her so much that she wasn’t even a factor in my excitement about seeing part 3. Then she appeared and I just fell in love all over again. There’s more made of the funny relationship between her and Buzz that began in the second movie, and in the midst of this are some insanely stylised, romantically-lit shots of her that just wowed me. It’s her face that really carries the first of those aforementioned emotional punches at the end and all I need to do is recall that face and her hand reaching out to start crying all over again. This is a wonderful, wonderful addition to a practically perfect series of movies. But you know that already.

Oh yes: another extra thing to mention as I won’t write it anywhere else… moreso for me than the 3D among reasons to see this movie on the big screen is the short that precedes it. I always forget that Pixar put these shorts before all their features and this one like so many of them is so great it threatens to supplant the memory of the movie. It’s called “Day & Night” and combines 2D and 3D animation in an ingenious way that really can’t be described well to anyone who hasn’t seen it. It’s about conflicting ideas and perspectives from the broadest scale to the most specific (you could argue it’s simply about the co-existence of 2D and 3D cinema). It has insane technique and a great message in the perfect balance that the best of Pixar has to offer. I’ll be very disappointed if it isn’t at least nominated for an Oscar next year (likewise, of course, the feature it precedes!)

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Bedtime Stories

Bedtime Stories

Friday, May 21st, 2010

I was worried to say the least about using this to kickstart what will hopefully be a movie-watching habit as frequent as I used to have… though I’ve loved Adam Sandler on and off in the past, it’s a very up and down affair, and when it comes to this kind of Adam Sandler movie, at least how it looked from the trailer, I was pretty sure it’d be far too samey, toned down (it’s a Disney “family movie“…) and forgettable. On top of this, I didn’t quite see how the story was supposed to work. Being from Disney, too, and following so soon after Enchanted as it does, I feared that however they dealt with the nature of kids’ bedtime stories, they’d somehow manage to sully basic tenets of innocence as they did in that 2007 movie.

For at least the movie’s entire first act, I remained horribly skeptical. This movie takes a bizarre amount of time to set itself up, and even once the strange/not-so-strange-afterall things start happening to Sandler in the real world, it takes a long time for the movie to really explain itself. Example: the gumball rain you see in the trailer. It’s a great moment that seems to be the first absolute reveal that “omg what happens in the bedtime stories happens in real life” … and all the choices made in this scene, the camera, editing, music, make it feel like a big moment – they practically do the Shawshank thing, for heaven’s sake – but then we see that it’s merely a gumball truck crashed on an overpass above Sandler’s car. The movie is kind of filled with such semi-anti-climaxes. I guess this is simply my fault for expecting something more magical from the trailer etc. Make no mistake, there’s no magic in this story, just coincidence that may or may not occur as a result of belief in magic. I can’t argue that this, however, is in its way almost more fulfilling.

What I eventually remembered here, too, was that I’ve actually really loved some of those samey old Adam Sandler movies more than I expected, and though this movie is certainly kid-_safe_ (whether they’re kid-_friendly_ I’ll say something about in a moment…) it is really in the end absolutely a member of that sub-genre Sandler has become known for. There’s a scene at the end here when his character has to deliver a presentation to his boss following a spectacular song-and-dance number by Guy Pearce, the villain, and his team. It’s to be the big summing up of the story, Sandler’s big moment, but just prior to the scene he has his tongue stung by a bee, so he’s talking gibberish (like the alien in the kids’ story that was told just the night before). His friend, played by Russell Brand, translates. It’s one of those classic Sandler scenes, like the final speech in Mr. Deeds or Billy Madison, as silly and hilarious as it is, if it catches you in the right mood, actually also just a little touching.

If there’s something wrong with the movie, it could be just that. For sure, you can feel safe enough showing your kids this movie or even letting them watch it alone, there’s nothing per se that’s inappropriate for the under 12s… but it is very much the kind of “family movie” where the “bits for kids” and “bits for adults” are well delineated and this could alienate younger viewers. This is perfectly illustrated early on when Sandler’s character tells the kids the first bedtime story, and he gives the character in the story that represents him the name “Mr. Underappreciated”, until one of the kids says, “what’s underdemeciated?” forcing him to rename the character, “Sir Fix-a-lot”. (Oh-ho-ho. Kids are dumb, right?)

I don’t like such condescending attitudes to children at all, even in small and subtle doses, especially in a movie with Walt Disney’s name on it, a man who always said you should speak to children no differently than you speak to adults* – and it doesn’t end there with this movie. Just in case they get bored at any point (like during the aforementioned quite excruciating set-up act), there’s always the enormous-eyed guinea pig, at complete odds with the otherwise “the magic’s all in your head” stance of the story, on hand to entertain. I think the movie could’ve been that bit better if they had just run with the idea that Sandler’s belief that the stories really affect reality is just a misunderstanding – like the felix felicis that helps Ron succeed at Quidditch in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, for example, even though he never took it… it’s the belief that these things are possible that makes them happen, not any real supernatural force. In short, a little confidence.

That small issue aside, it’s still not enough to ruin the overall joy I got from this movie. Once it got going I barely stopped laughing, often very out loud. It’s a typical Disney good-triumphs-over-evil story and, despite the “family-friendly” moniker, an Adam Sandler movie all the way (just in case that’s important to you). I frankly adored it in the end, and will watch it again for sure.

* “I don’t believe in talking down to children. I don’t believe in talking down to any certain segment. I like to kind of just talk in a general way to the audience.” – Walt Disney

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The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

This is not a movie I expected to wind up liking anywhere near as much as I did as the end credits rolled… those who know me will know I have been a pretty huge fan of Disney in my time and even in those times when I mightn’t have liked the product, I always found them to be a fascinating company, in the way they’re perceived both positive/negatively, in the way they change (or try to change) with the times, and yet the way they seem to (most of the time) retain the spirit of Uncle Walt all the way.

I was one of those who never quite understood the decision to quit 2D animation. Yes: Home on the Range was a disappointment that seemed to confirm whatever reasoning lay behind it, but I was never one of those who considered the likes of Atlantis, Treasure Planet, and most of all Lilo & Stitch (which gets better every year, I swear), to be so much worse than the most average of their earlier output (Robin Hood, *The Great Mouse Detective*… they haven’t always been classics, is what I’m saying); and while it’s true they weren’t living up to the heights of Pixar’s CGI work, or constantly doing their best, they were for the most part easily still better than the output of Dreamworks etc.

That long intro is a way of saying, I was never going to be saying in this review, as so many have, “at last, Disney return to form!” because I honestly don’t think they ever lost it. Mis-steps, yes; total betrayal of their roots? No. The only time I feared they had lost it, as a matter of fact, was much more recently than their closing of the 2D department. If you’ve read my reviews before, you might have seen my semi-rant about Enchanted… another movie which people embraced with strangely deluded arms which seemed to think Disney hadn’t been doing 2D Princess stories for half a century let alone half a decade. I thought the animated sequences in that movie were honestly just embarrassing – and I thought its message, its way of taking the whole “love at first sight and happily ever after” thing of old and treating it “responsibly”, was plain depressing and couldn’t be further removed from what I (and I’m sure many others) turn to Disney for.

I mention that because (finally we can get to the movie!) this was what I really worried for a while would be repeated here. I’ve been following this movie (and the next big 2D from Disney, Rapunzel, about which I at least had the same reservations) since it was announced and especially after Enchanted I really thought my time for loving Disney was coming to an end with the changes I kept hearing. I won’t get started on the other embracing comments about this being Disney “finally” having a black Princess (wow, it only took ‘em 80 years, amazing), despite that princess turning into a bright green amphibian 30 minutes in…

There’s a moment very early here when the heroine’s father informs her, “you can wish on a star but the star can only take you part o’ the way…” The heroine in this scene is still a very young girl. It brought me right back to that scene in Enchanted when the little girl’s father says something similar to her, to which she replies astutely, “I’m only six!” to which he retaliates, “You won’t always be.”

Luckily, The Princess and the Frog has this moment for a better reason.

What this movie does for much of its first hour is similar to what Disney tried to do with Enchanted, this new “responsible” approach, telling kids you can’t just dream your life away or rely on daddy’s credit card to get you out of trouble or, indeed, just wish upon a star which (among many things) are all things Disney have been criticised for doing for decades now. I understand these criticisms and the well-meaning behind them, but I can’t agree with them. Disney is dreaming. In any case: here it isn’t, as was the case in Enchanted, the whole message. The responsible approach to magical thinking – the “having a fall-back plan in case your dreams don’t come true” thing – here is a starting point from which the film makers then work towards delivering the old Disney message in a way that works better than ever in a world where that former message is all too hopelessly prevalent.

I cannot find the words to express the relief I felt and how astonished I was when the final act of this movie came out of nowhere to make all my pent-up frustrations with the run-up to it completely blow away. Like I said, I’m not gonna go all out and say it’s their best since Beauty and the Beast or Lady and the Tramp or god forbid further back (really would you believe there are people on this earth who completely dismiss the 90s resurgence stuff as “not really Disney”?), but it is certainly for me their best since Lilo & Stitch, and there are elements, particularly in the last half hour, that really did take my breath away like nothing from the studio has since Tarzan. I haven’t even talked about the quality of the animation itself or Randy Newman’s songs etc, but it’s probably been covered plenty elsewhere. I really cannot wait to see it again without all the fears I came to it with this time around, and my hopes for Rapunzel are beginning to crawl their way back too a pretty frenzied peak.

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Up

Up

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

I’m loathe to say it, but even on a second viewing (which I felt necessary for this movie before reviewing), I still had a real failure of disbelief suspension in parts that made total connection with the movie ultimately impossible, thus preventing me from giving it the high rating that’s best moments have me wishing I could give. Don’t get me wrong – Up is a beautiful movie, and if it turns out to be the first computer animated movie to be nominated for Best Picture as I’ve heard it might, I’ll be pleased (heck, anything’s better than 4/5 of last year’s nominees) – but there is a definite, undeniable lack of consistency here which I’ve felt before in Pixar movies but never so much as I did here.

It begins, as you’ve probably heard, with a sweeping view of the “curmudgeonly” (as he appears in the trailer: actually, I was pleasantly surprised by how lovable and involved the character is) hero’s life up to, as Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode might describe it, an “unpleasant event” which I won’t reveal except to say that the cut that follows the end of this opening is really where my problem with the movie begins. It’s a tactless cut, from 10 minutes of film making that has been proven to make the most hardened viewer bawl their eyes out, that those children who actually understand it will need days to recover from, into quirky, light comedy. I found myself even on the second viewing at this point wanting to shake the screen, “you just can’t do this following what you just showed me!”

But settle into the rest of the story you must, and what lies beyond this heartbreakingly real opening is a world you really couldn’t foresee. The trailer shows all of the unlikely rabble you’ll meet joining our elderly hero as he tries to navigate his balloon-lifted house to a “land lost in time” where he and his childhood sweetheart once dreamed they’d live. There’s an overweight scout just looking to get his “assisting the elderly” badge, a giant and ludicrously colourful bird and a dog equipped with a hi-tech collar that enables him to talk.

It’s not the unlikely nature of these characters’ presence that bugged me, and I grew to love all of them and they all have moments that hook into the movie’s foremost philosophy. What bothers me is that none of this gels with the genuinely gutwrenching reality of the way the story starts. There’s nothing to suggest, in the manner of The Wizard of Oz did, say, that when Carl’s house takes off that we’ve entered any kind of fantasy; and there’s so much that follows this point, slapdash treatment of physics etc (Carl seems unbelievably spritely considering he relies so much on a stick, eg), that really took me out of the flow of the movie. I know that some reading this will feel I’m being even more curmudgeonly than Carl seems in the trailer … but I don’t say this like it totally ruined the movie for me, because it didn’t; I won’t, however, avoid saying it just because I know how those people will read it. I just would’ve expected Pixar to make all of these shifts in tone, from the absurdly distressing to the distressingly absurd, gel better. It’s not the first time, either.

It’s hard to get mad at the movie, though, and while other computer animated (especially 3D) movies are still being made that rely on the tried and true combined with celebrity voices, you have to bow down to Pixar for continuing to make movies like this that make you think, while the end credits roll, “I can’t believe they got away with selling that as a kids movie,” lol. It is, if only for it’s most emotional moments, easily one of the studio’s best; but like so many of their “best” (for me, they have yet to top Finding Nemo) it’s mostly of predictably high quality. Pixar have such a high and consistent standard I feel compelled to demand more from them. They have proven over and over that they have enormous reserves of creativity and originality, but here more than anywhere it feels like they have just thrown it slapdash at a wall with little of the old Disney storytelling machine to hold it together. I would love if they would try to reign it in and try to distill it down more for their next project, because they really should be making flawless movies by now.

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Hannah Montana: The Movie

Hannah Montana: The Movie

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

If you know me, you’ll know that I came to this wanting to love it and that there was a lot I hoped for from it. I’m a big fan of Hannah Montana, but I’m no dumb blind follower (well, maybe a little … hehe); I’m aware of the kinda massive problem that lies at the very heart of the concept and the reason why a lot of people are blindly agin it. When I saw the first trailer for the movie that flatly set up the movie’s central dilemma (She’s Always Had The Best of Both Worlds. Now She Has To Pick One), I got pretty darn excited. Could a live action Disney movie based on a TV show in this decade actually do the right thing by its target audience?

The movie begins perfectly, exploding the confines of the TV screen setting up the blonde wig as a fully fledged cinematic icon and a plot point as Robbie Ray stares in deep thought at it mounted on a static wig stand as Miley battles with security outside to get into her own concert. Within the movie’s first few minutes Miley/Hannah bonks her head a few times not to mention having a coconut fall on her head and a ball thrown at her. Any fears that as Miley grows she might leave her goofy streak behind are quickly brushed aside here.

My heart sank briefly at the introduction of our villain, a tubby British tabloid pap almost as cringeworthy as Richard O’Brien’s in Spiceworld (hmm, I liked that too, incidentally :) ) but soon enough the real heart of the movie just started to get me and get me more. They sell Miley’s dilemma here almost shockingly well. It would be easy for the movie to sound as whiny as the show’s naysayers think it would be, “Oh it’s so hard being a megastar!” etc … but the real fight here is really about the wants of the masses vs. the higher needs of the few. When Hannah troops ahead into an impromptu concert at Miley’s best friend Lilly’s party because she’s not given the space to become the right person, the situation is entirely believable. You feel Lilly’s hurt off camera as you watch Hannah going through the motions, and you can see Miley’s eyes under that wig scanning the crowd torn over what to do: not just in the moment but with her whole life. All through the movie there’s a sense of pre-occupation about Miley – she’s really going through the decision of her life here.

There are lowlights, of course. The Tyra Banks shoe fight, Rico’s exploding cake, Jackson getting bitten on the butt by an alligator are among the flashes where I felt a little let down by the proceedings but I know you couldn’t really release this movie without them. Some of the slapstick stuff really had me laughing in spite of myself: the celebrity plate rack, for instance – you see it coming as gramma places Elvis in pride of place but I didn’t quite see it coming the way it ultimately does, lol.

Most of all it’s about Miley. Despite the title, there’s a lot more Miley here than there is Hannah, and I for one believe the things she’s been saying in interviews about the Miley in this movie being closer to the “real” Miley than we’ve ever seen. I say this in the best way possible, but this girl with all the gloss stripped away has a really funny face and some of the ways she twists it in this movie, combined with the time the camera spends on them (even in slow motion in parts) … they’re not the faces you generally get from a soulless megastar worth billions. They’re beautiful. It’s this goofy streak in Miley that always brings me back for more and its here, thank mercy, in spades.

Which I guess brings me to the ending which comes in two parts, neither of which I’ll entirely spoil for you because I had managed to avoid the details and I’m glad. I did not see the big moment on stage at the end coming at all here. It’s a moment I wanted to see in the movie right from the start but that I never once dreamed would actually be there. I had a lot of moments during the movie where I almost cried, but this was the moment where I really let it come. However. This is unfortunately followed by the real ending … which kind of, pretty much, actually entirely pushes the reset button TV style. I’m trying not to focus too much on this part of the ending because the rest of the movie just pleased me so much, also, I think if I think about it some more later on I might find a way to love it anyway (something to do with – the way the little girl says “Hannah is a part of you, don’t let her go,” which is something I hope the real Miley never does, ie, never speaking of it in 10 years time in an embarrassed way).

Anyway, in short, it was everything I hoped it would be and more – though some of the more was questionable. The songs are great, in fact, they’re growing on me (my first listen of the soundtrack a couple of weeks ago was a little disappointed), there’s more Lilly than I initially feared. Miley outdoes herself acting wise though the real performance I loved here was that of Margo Martindale as gramma. The director and cinematographer do a great job of keeping the screen alive right from the aforementioned wig moment onward and though there are the inevitable gags for less advanced pre-teens, they pass quickly enough as not to impact the larger experience.

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Bolt

Bolt

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

If I called Igor on being too like a whole raft of other things, then I’ve gotta be fair and point out from the start that Bolt is really just Toy Story in new clothes. Replace Buzz Lightyear – a toy spaceman confronted with the plastic hard fact of his fiction – with a little girl’s pup who believes he is the superdog he plays in a top TV show, and you pretty much have Bolt. The difference between this movie’s familiarity and Igor’s with its multiple sources? What can I say except this is just plain better.

The movie opens with one of the best action sequences I have seen since the first Matrix sequel – John Powell’s score is fantastic and on top of the thrills there are laugh-out-loud visual gags. Where a movie like Igor has me glad to find other things to do, this one makes me put things down as I find myself more and more incapable of removing my eyes from the screen. This, and considering how fully adorable I found first the younger Penny then of course Miley Penny, the best news here is how the movie kept me happy even in its middle section without her. In Mittens we have a kind of substitute for Jessie of the Toy Story sequel (which arguably told the same story, too) – her monologue that begins with her making an argument for Bolt not returning to Penny but ends with her finally revealing some of her backstory is just one of many moments that reminded me of the gutwrenching “When She Loved Me” scene in Toy Story 2.

Basically, it has all the substance these movies require on top of the great animation (which, incidentally, even that is better than Igor and the like – take the characters out of some scenes and you’d think you were looking at a photograph … heck, even some of the character stuff left this impression on me) that Igor sorely lacked. I kinda knew it from the moment at the start with the toy carrot. I just knew as soon as I saw the look between Bolt and Penny, “if it comes back to that carrot at the end, I’m gonna be in tears,” … you guess whether I needed tissues or not :) Needless to say, Disney, thank you, this makes up for Tinker Bell almost like Meet the Robinsons did for The Wild.

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Tinker Bell

Tinker Bell

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

It disappointed me more than words can say when I finally put this DVD in the machine only to be greeted by a trailer for “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure”, to be released in 2009. Don’t get me wrong, I knew ahead of time that the intention was to produce more than one of these, that it’s as much about the whole Disney Fairies realm as it is about Tinker Bell on her lonesome – but somehow, having the trailer for the next installment (literally, if you count on the questionable “Disney FastPlay” feature on the DVD – tell me, how does having a small featurette explaining FastPlay on all these discs speed your access to the movie, lol?) flow into the feature presentation brings to the fore the fact that this 75 minute straight-to-video production just isn’t as standalone and definitive as the title suggests it should be.

That’s the feeling that, kind of like the hokey set-up in Blindness, hindered my enjoyment of this thing the most. It is beautifully designed, if perhaps not so well animated (some of the characters movements struck me as very game-like) – the colour and light are just about worth taking the 75 minutes to take in and if I said, “… for a straight-to-video movie” in my Little Mermaid 3 review then I ought to give this production the same liberty – compared to some of the arse that Disney produced in the nineties, there’s an argument to be made that they’re moving in the right direction. That said, I’m beginning to wonder if Disney are fully aware of this ‘excuse’ and the fact is that they could still do better.

The problem with this movie is that, much like Halloween III: Season of the Witch (which I watched again this past Halloween but didn’t review again; for the record, I loved it second time around but for what I’m about to say) wasn’t a Halloween movie, this isn’t a Tinker Bell movie. Not Disney’s Tinker Bell, of Peter Pan fame, any way. The character is entirely changed. The CG can be as beautifully rendered as it likes but it still demands that the very design of the character is altered. Disney deserve kudos in the current “don’t mix sex n kids” climate for showing so much Fairy flesh as they do, remembering how sexual Tink was in the original Peter Pan; but even this is not enough to blind me to the fact that the Tink in this production is not the Tinker Bell. I know how ridiculous this sounds to a lot of people, but I kinda think it’s important. If they’d called this “Tinker Bell and the fill in the blank“ like the sequels look to be titled, I mightn’t be so picky and disappointed … but when you use such a definitive title as this, you’ve gotta earn it, and in these 75 minutes, bluntly, Disney don’t.

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Wall·E

Wall·E

Monday, October 6th, 2008

Okay, we may be entering the realm of reviews that I actually started, so they might be getting longer, hehe …

But it almost pains me to say, what can be said of this that hasn’t yet been said? I know, it’s taken me an unforgivable amount of time to see it. But it’s Pixar … their reliability level is almost boringly, consistently, humblingly high, I think I’ve said before. There are other animation mediums thankfully creeping back out of the woodwork lately after a decade of CG holding centre stage (Disney’s own stuff to come in the next couple of years fascinates me it looks like the ArtRage of computer animation lol) – but when it comes to computer animation, Pixar really does unfailingly put the other companies to abject shame, and Wall•E is no exception.

What struck me most about the movie I think was how much bleaker it was even than I’d been told. Right from the opening, the empty scenes of desolation that Wall•E rolls through to Thomas Newman’s lonely score, it’s extremely unnerving and frighteningly believable as to a place we could be headed. Once the movie goes into space, I actually found myself momentarily feeling very wrong indeed at the portrayal of today’s lazy humanity’s ultimate destination. It’s astounding that a movie that on its very surface is so scathing can still win its audience over with humour and emotion through a couple of hunks of metal.

For me it easily beats Cars and The Incredibles (sorry Vi!) – perhaps not Ratatouille though the running time helps it in the repeat viewing zone. I’m not sure if it’s up there with Andrew Stanton’s own Finding Nemo. I personally wasn’t impressed a few years ago when people wowed at the expressionless emotion of Gromit in Curse of the Were-Rabbit but the amount of emotion gleaned here from glances and gestures is frequently overwhelming.

A lot of reviews I’ve read or heard talked about the basically silent first half and seemed disappointed by the second half where it’s a little more traditionally Pixar but I really didn’t feel that – and the moment at the end where the “lovers” are finally together on the same page just melted me completely, the silence, stillness, and slowness of that moment are just astonishing – nevermind for a “kids” movie … for any movie today. There’s tons of competition coming up as the Oscars approach, but I’m still standing by my theory that this year will be a more commercial contest after 2 years of bolder film making taking the cake; my beloved Mamma Mia! predix may be dreamy, but this one certainly seems like it has a shot at being the second animated feature ever to be nominated for Best Pic.

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