I’m one of the people at the Austin screening on Sunday. Unfortunately my complete review’s embargoed, but you should have no reservations about this film. I think pushing it for Best Animated Film would be a sure thing… but it really should be pushed for Best Picture. I stand by my “masterpiece” take on this wonderful film.
Pixar’s best, bar none.
[i]He’s under 2ft tall even when standing on the tips of his caterpillar tracks. He has ridiculously expressive binocular eyes, a taste for the corniest musicals that humanity has produced and a cheerfully indestructible pet cockroach. Meet WALL-E, the last little robot left on Earth and your companion for 90 minutes of cinematic bliss.
WALL-E or Waste Allocation Load Lifter — Earth Class, to give him his full name, is the eponymous star of the latest film from the Pixar studio (home of Toy Story, The Incredibles and Finding Nemo). WALL-E, written and directed by Andrew Stanton, the man behind Nemo, is yet more proof that, in terms of animation technology and dazzling inventiveness, there is no other company that is even in the same league. Come to that, there’s not likely to be another entry in the overheated summer movie market that has WALL-E’s unabashed, old-fashioned romanticism and — a rather bleak view of the future of the planet notwithstanding — its ultimate optimism.
Excitement about WALL-E, which is screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival next week, has been building to fever pitch in the blogosphere, with some commentators drawing parallels with timeless classic family films such as ET: The Extra-Terrestrial and The Wizard of Oz. These are lofty claims to be making so early in the movie’s life, and yet the film does bear some essential similarities to its antecedents — perhaps in the sweet-natured innocence of the story and the unabashed, heartstring-tugging sentimentality…[/i]
twitchfilm.net/site/view/wall-e- … -hit-again
Wall-E rocks cinema all the way back to its vaudeville roots! It’s an environmentally conscious Tati meets Kubrick opera set in a Post-apocalyptic future where mankind is nowhere to be found on the barren and toxic plains of Earth. All that remains is a highly curious heart on his sleeve robot named Wall-E and his faithful roach companion that we watch go about daily life without nary a word of dialogue. The robotic soliloquy, charm and relentless curiosity of Wall-E is pure movie magic. Of course daily life is far from boring or routine at the hands of the Pixar storytellers! Daily life soon gives way to a spiraling chain of events that is best not written about so that you, the soon to be viewer, can discover it fresh.
Wall-E is a love letter to classical science fiction cinema and is Pixar’s most accomplished and politically charged film to date, which will leave audiences begging for more and offering immense repeat viewing value.
Wall-E is a non-stop sci-fi comedy thrill ride that takes us through a cautionary tale of what, ”staying the course” might really mean for Earth hundreds of years from now if mankind cannot live in balance with the planet, its resources and suffer from over reliance of technology in our lives. It’s message of burgeoning hope and optimism that there can in fact one day be on planet Earth environmental peace and harmony without needing to Google everything we pretend to know. For summer time audiences, Wall-E, offers up a chance to beat the heat and renew both young and old with everything they love about great cinema.
Everything we love about Pixar films is proudly on display here – great storytelling, amazing digitally realized worlds and characters, biting commentary, cultural references and beating heart tales full of magic and endless imagination. With Wall-E, Pixar outdoes and out performs all of its previous tales as if it were King Kong climbing on top of the Empire State building to flex its creative muscles and proclaim their soul. They aren’t content on complacency in the digital animated film arena as their work continues to highlight them as trailblazers that take us to new unimagined heights with each film. Digital animation cinema has never been this towering before. The digital animation is so damn good here, especially where Pixar further pushes out the boundaries of what is possible, it makes you want to slap yourself. And it must be said, never in the history of film have robots been this darn exciting and fun to watch.
Not so glowing reviews (would you be so kind to give us your opinion about that, Nordling?):
[i]Okay, we just got back and here’s my review with minor, but not heavy, spoilers (I’ll post in the other WALL-E forums as well). WALL-E is a very good movie and I enjoyed it very much, but it is not without its faults, so those of you with those massively high hopes may be disappointed.
Here’s my impression: LOVED the first half, thought the second half was just okay. The first half is all about WALL-E and takes place entirely on Earth. We follow him around through a normal work day, watch his quirks and eccentricities, and get to know the guy. It’s very quiet and character driven, but not boring at all; they could have made the whole movie about nothing but a day in the life of this little robot and I’d be happy. It actually reminds me of the first half of I AM LEGEND - we just get to watch the character isolated and all alone, no plot points or anything, and the whole thing is INTRIGUING. The second half? Well, it’s SOOOO very different - literally could have been a completely different movie. It takes place on the space ship and it’s nothing but a 45 minute chase scene. Remember the last act of MONSTERS INC.? It’s EXACTLY like that except probably 15 minutes longer. Pretty much this: Chase object #1 down, save such-and-such, object #1 missing again, such-and-such breaks and needs fixing, save such-and-such again, object missing again…nonstop. What makes it disappointing is that WALL-E is in maybe half of these scenes; the movie stops being about him and focuses in on minor spoilers the humans. And let me tell you, if you’re overweight, you will be offended. In the future everyone is fat, slovenly, and dumb. No human can walk because they are too obese; instead, everyone is wheeled about in a hover-bed where they do nothing but eat and watch television and gab to one another. Yeah. The second half focuses more on the ship’s captain who has “had enough” as opposed to following WALL-E. It’s so weird; it’s like you get a second half to another movie altogether. These humans are so out of place with the rest of the movie and you’re literally disgusted with them, yet by the end of the flick we’re supposed to be “rooting” for these people who have never took a step in their life! I’m still kind of stunned by the turn this film took: from quiet, quirky, and character driven, to action-packed-chase-flick.
It may sound like I dislike it; I don’t, I just think that it started out wonderfully and devolved into your basic actiony kids flick. Personally I’d give the first half an A and the second half a B-, so let’s call it a B+ for all intents and purposes.
Oh, another thing (or two): there are live action actors in this flick. Yeah. Fred Willard (from THE TONIGHT SHOW) is featured prominently, as well as other in-the-flesh actors. In the Earth scenes this works flawlessly because the animation is so photorealistic that you buy it. It’s when we get to the ship that it’s jarring because all the humans there are CG’d. It’s like, “What”? They try to explain this away in a little gag in the Captain’s quarters where the captain walks past portraits of all the ship’s prior captains and each one progressively turns from real to cartoony, but I still don’t get it - why have some of the humans be live action actors and some be CG? It doesn’t make sense to me.
Oh, and the short at the beginning was hilarious - it’s called PRESTO and features a magician and his hungry rabbit.[/i]
And another one:
[i]Before I get into WALL-E, Pixar’s latest effort (which I saw last night at a special Ain’t It Cool News screening), I’d like to make it perfectly clear that I like the picture very much. Overall, it’s a little marvel of a film - funny and exciting and heartwarming and technologically astounding and is certainly one of the better pictures released thus far this year. Of all the Pixar features it probably looks the best, especially since it’s attempting to replicate a dying Earth in a manner that’s never quite looked this way on screen before. It’s also magnificently directed by Andrew Stanton (I’d love to see him get a Best Director nod for this), who tells this story with so much drive and so much creativity that it makes him possibly my favorite of all Pixar directors. The film also has some fine satirical zing about contemporary consumer society (although coming from tie-in happy Disney and Pixar, it’s not that biting) and modern stupidity that also makes it worth appreciating, so it’s going to deserve much of the acclaim it’s going to get. I’ll say it here and now: Unless that new Miyazaki film isn’t so hot (or if it doesn’t open in 2008), the Best Animated Feature Oscar is WALL-E’s to lose.
But there’s always a “but”, isn’t there? Like I said, I like the film a lot and I don’t begrudge it any success. Pixar is the best at what they do and they do what they do damn well, as we all know. The problem with WALL-E, however, is that for the first time in their history, Pixar is going for “cute” and I don’t like it. Wall-E, the lead, is cute. He falls in love with another robot – cute. He adores the film version of HELLO, DOLLY, at least the parts that only contain Michael Crawford (who, correct me if I’m wrong, receives no credit) – cute. He has a cockroach sidekick – intended to be cute, but if you live in Texas and, like me, hate cockroaches like the day is long (and the day is pretty damn long), not so cute. Never before have I sensed that Pixar was trying to butter me up by playing it cute, but they do here. Does it work? Ultimately, it does. I was touched by the robot romance and didn’t find myself disliking Wall-E itself, but like I said, I could feel the attempts at pulling the heartstrings as kinda forced and resented it for a bit. The HELLO, DOLLY thing really got to me, too. Why HELLO, DOLLY? Does Stanton have a thing for that particular picture? Something wrong with a legitimately great movie musical like OKLAHOMA! or something? They keep re-playing the same two songs (“It Only Takes a Moment” and “Put on Your Sunday Clothes”) and it got to be a bit grating, I must say. And the cockroach? Listen guys, I understand they they’re probably going to survive longer than mankind, but some people just don’t like them, OK? The film’s second half is much-more plot oriented and expands the story into non-cute directions, so it’s much easier to take, but when WALL-E plays it cute, I wasn’t always having it.
All that said, I certainly have no problem recommending WALL-E and am sure that it will be as beloved as many of the other Pixar hits are. But like I said before, those pictures didn’t need to be cute to work and they weren’t. I hope that Pixar is able to get the cute out of their system with WALL-E and move on from here. But there’s nothing cute about cheap sentimentality.
(As per the usual course, WALL-E opens with a new Pixar short, a delightful piece called PRESTO about a rabbit and a magic hat, that is probably my favorite Pixar short yet.)[/i]
Well, I disagree about the cuteness. What I can compare this film to is something along the lines of an Aesop’s fable in that it uses simple characters, in this case cute robots, to tell a story that has a moral that impacts us all. Sure, they’re cute, and I love WALL*E, and EVE, and MO, and the rest of the robots, but they are simply cyphers to get to the real message of the film, which becomes a quiet call to arms over stewardship. It’s not preachy, but it’s more effective than Al Gore’s AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH could ever be, and I like that film. Without the emotional resonance of these characters, it WOULD be preachy.
I said “masterpiece” and I meant it. I’m practically a Pixar apologist. I love all their films and they’re pretty much the gold standard of animation right now, the yardstick which all modern animation measures itself by. And without hesitation I can say that WALL*E transcends simple children’s fare and becomes high art. They’ll be talking about this movie for years. It may just be the film that inspires our kids to clean up after the wreck that we adults have left behind. It’s that good.
I know this may be stating the obvious, but if you guys are going to paste reviews here and they have spoilers, especially if they are about things happening in the second half of the movie, could you use the spoiler tags? I really want to continue reading this thread because I want to follow closely how the film is doing and the first reactions to it, but at the same time, don’t want the movie spoiled. Thanks. 
Maybe after the film opens we could make a different, free-for-all thread where you don’t have to use spoiler tags and can discuss the movie in as much detail as you wish - I, and others who haven’t seen the movie yet, would just have to avoid that thread all together.
skims reviews that don’t have spoilyness
…I’m just gonna go pass out into a puddle of happy now, however that works.
Here’s one review in Estonian: filmsmusic.blogspot.com/2008/06/wall-e.html
He basically says that it’s kind and warm animation with good humour… Tear-jerker in some parts. As good as Finding Nemo, if not even better. He loves it and gives it 10 points out of ten.
2.5 of 4 stars: dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=2127
[i]For all its charms and wonders, one moment sticks in my head and, well, craw. It also confuses me. Why? Why go there? Other than the dark chuckles from the liberal critics around me, what’s to gain? And other than a lack of self-control or hubris on the filmmakers’ part, there’s no explaining it. But they did it. They actually had the President (Fred Willard) say about his failed mission, “Stay the course.”
Have we lost Pixar? Have we lost the wonderful studio who brought us The Incredibles and Ratatouille to Bush Derangement Syndrome? Here you have a winning streak going back ten-years, enormous amounts of public goodwill, equal amounts of credibility as serious storytellers, and they stop things cold, yanking you out of the story with the liberal nonsense. Quite a disappointment. Anyway…
800 years in the future Earth has been abandoned by all but a single, small, resourceful, expressive, and oh-so lonely garbage compactor named Wall-E, who diligently does his job cleaning up — one square-foot at a time — the mountains of garage that eventually forced mankind to flee into space hundreds of years earlier. Powered by the sun and with only a cockroach and a VHS copy of Hello Dolly for company, Wall-E longs for someone to love, a hand to hold.
After centuries alone, Eve arrives. She’s a sleek, white probe with a deadly streak sent to look for any sign of life. Immediately smitten, Wall-E dodges her laser blasts until he earns her affection. It’s the small plant he offers her that takes them both on a journey into the faraway universe.
The first forty-minutes are magical. The introduction to Wall-E and slow reveals of his routine and world are mesmerizing and almost completely without dialogue. Eve’s arrival, their courtship, and those first moments in outer space are equally wondrous. It’s only when we get inside of the ship and meet the human beings that things become routine in that frantic kind of way that hopes to cover for a lack of any real story.
The human characters (and robot supporting characters) are terribly underdeveloped. Much of the latter part of the second-act is spent with the ship’s captain, voiced by Jeff Garlin, but he’s flat, only there to move the plot along. As the plot turns towards the fate of the human characters, Wall-E and Eve are left to chase the Maguffin with a cast of “whacky” robots. Eventually this results in third-act numbness and you just bide your time until it’s over.
At first there’s not much of an environmental message. The piles of garbage covering our planet come off as nothing more than a good idea to set up a cool alt-version of our world and the lead character. Unfortunately, this doesn’t last. The humans are introduced as meaty, lazy, chair-bound consumers who live in a world run by a large corporation. The message about our consumerism, sloth, and addiction to visual stimulus is eventually beaten like a drum.
This may well be the fifth or sixth movie this year to depict our government as taken over by a corporation – as though that would be a bad thing.
One very odd aspect was Fred Willard as the ’stay the course’ President. He’s actually Fred Willard. Not a cartoon and not a computer rendering. Every other human is a cartoon and cartoony. He’s only seen on via historical footage, but still…
Wall-E the character, however, is amazing. The imagination behind his creation, how he moves and expresses himself, is quite a thing. I could watch that dumb little robot do his dull job for hours. It might’ve actually made for a better movie.
Whatever you do, be sure to show up on time so you don’t miss Presto, the cartoon-short that opens the show. At just a few minutes, Presto is a small masterpiece. Energy, humor, personality… It takes you back to the best of the old Warner Brothers’ cartoons when The Mighty Chuck Jones was at the height of his powers. [/i]
So is that review 2.5 out of 4 because of a measly line implying politics?
Lame.
Wow, this guy need to calm down. He’s letting his political afflictions get in the way of enjoying what is sure to be a great movie. I don’t find any liberal brainwashing in Pixar’s movies and a jab at the president doesn’t even come close to that (we’ve been caricaturing and making jokes about every president there ever was so why not keep it contemporary as we’ve all had enough Bill Clinton jokes).
Environmental messages also doesn’t make this liberal brainwashing, heck global warming never happened in WALL-E’s world, but it was just polluted. Pixar just took the route that made the most sense and over consuming makes perfect sense (everyone in America does this, even people on welfare).
So until I see WALL-E flying around with a bumper sticker saying support change 08, I refuse to believe this is a politically driven movie, and I will not let politics even enter my head while watching this movie. Don’t tell me politics would get in this reviewer’s way of enjoying the Metal Gear Solid series or other classic games/movies that deal with political corruption.
Also, Pixar makes movies that need to appeal world wide and american politically driven movies don’t mean crap outside the US.
Just my thoughts, so I’m disregarding that last review and giving WALL-E an all positive reaction so far!
That guy’s a righty. He’s written right-wing reviews for a while now. So take that into consideration.
There’s also this guy at the CHUD forums, who rants about the consumerism, Stanton and WALL-E plastic toys…hm…
I think that those people don’t get the movie. They just see the anti-consumerism-message but this is just a “transporter” for the deeper/core message.
Hah, you’re reading that? I’m in the middle of that discussion.
Yes, I see you posting there 
I’m not going to join the dicussion, because I think my English sucks (and therefore I cannot explain my standpoint clearly). Maybe you can post my/your view of the message there.
EDIT: Haha, I’ve seen the communist comment from that guy. I’m now laughing my ass off, sorry.
While I like reading reviews from the general movie goer, remember that just because someone has a blog it doesn’t mean their opinion is more important than yours. And, like some people did last year with Ratatouille, they give a bad review to an excellent film that is otherwise getting good reviews, just to get attention for themselves and their blog. It is looks like it has worked with that guy above so far…
So when will the Ebert & Roeper review be up?
Ugh, people are bashing it because of the environmental message? Are you serious?
Look, I’ve got a lot of conservative in me, but I never got why my fellow right wing people have a problem with people wanting to protect the planet. I mean, I don’t know where I stand on the global warming issue,[spoil] and I’m glad that that’s not what’s being preached in this according to people here[/spoil], but in general just protecting the enviorment? Is it that hard to believe that unless we take care of the Earth it could turn into a waste dump? Am I some kinda hippe because I have a recycling bin or something? Sheech. -_-;
And what’s next? I’m gonna get my fellow fundamentalist Christians giving it bad reviews because “oh no the rapture is gonna come before it gets that bad”? FOR THE LOVE OF PETE PEOPLE. LET’S LET OUR IMAGINATIONS RUN A LITTLE BIT. LIGHTEN UP.
As said in one of the featurettes by a PIXAR staff I’m pretty sure “This isn’t about what we think the future will be, but what it COULD be”
It is indeed sad that there are some people for whom everything must pass through the filter of their own personal politics (whether it be right or left) – they simply can’t just enjoy a book, movie, play or music on its own without judging and comparing it with their political views. If someone doesn’t like a film or a book for the quality of the product, that’s fine, but as just a gentle reminder, mindsets like those (who must see everything through their political filters) when taken too far have, in our past, led to such cultural “highlights” as bookburnings and blacklists.
In the end, everyone of course is entitled to his/her own opinion – but the person reading the reviews should keep in mind who the person writing the review is – if that person is one who sees everything through colored glasses of one type or another, or someone who is generally fair across the board. Heck, I don’t like horror/slasher films, so I’d probably give a bad review to one even if it was the best horror/slasher film ever made.
Hopefully the Ebert & Roper review should be this weekend (in LA, the show is broadcast Sunday evenings).
And of course with Wall-E’s release being this week, a bunch of reviews should start pouring in real soon…
better than finding nemo? whoa! that’s the best thing critics have said about a PIXAR film in a while (besides Ratatouille)