Once again, Pixar truly delivers! I love WALL•E! No, it wasn’t just a pretty good film, and no it wasn’t a kids movie that adults could muster courage to see, this is a truly amazing film. From the eye pleasing technology that drives the film, to the sleek visuals, all the way to the simple story about love amidst ruins. It’s a little ironic, then, that the studio’s greatest achievement to date, in my opinion, is a movie that is, on one level, about technology—and that the picture it paints is not a pretty one. Under the surface of an animated cartoon lies one of the purest works of hard science fiction seen on the big screen in a decade, and the world it creates is bleaker than any American animated film you could name.

The backdrop of the story of WALL•E is that Earth is no longer inhabited by humans; they abandoned it 700 years prior and left it unlivable. Now, man is in space floating along on a giant spaceship/spa/shopping mall called The Axiom-a race of fat, stupid, lazy and lethargic slobs, too bloated to even stand on their own two feet as they cruise around in hovering lounge chairs. They have no idea that their world is in destruction, they just want to sit, eat, and shop from BuyNLarge, the Wal-Mart-esque monopoly that essentially runs everything. I don’t want to give too much away, but there is definitely some major social commentary on how we as humans are consumed with consumerism, so much so that as we walked out of theater, my wife proclaimed, “I don’t want to eat any more, care about fashion anymore, I just want to go climb a tree.” I warn you, after you watch this movie, you might take a long look at yourself decide that your life is just too complex and you might even make some changes…I’m just saying.

The real story here is WALL•E himself, a lonely robot who goes about his day collecting and compacting trash with his cockroach companion. I think WALL•E is one of Pixar’s greatest characters yet, a simple robot who doesn’t speak any language yet evokes and expresses as much emotion, empathy, and love as any animated character has in film history. This is, I think, Pixar’s cash cow: the ability to get us as an audience to fall in love with seemingly mundane objects and the most unlikely of characters. I don’t care if it’s an old western toy, a little fish, an arrogant race car, a french rat who likes to cook, or a trash robot, their ability to weave a story and bring out such emotion is astounding! I found myself getting emotional during WALL•E, watching him maneuver through this treacherous world, coming to realize his own flaws, all for love.

His love is a sleek looking robot called EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) who is in every way opposite of WALL•E. She’s sleek where he is blocky, she is pristine where he is rusty, she is confident where he is awkward, and she is as dangerous as he is harmless. They are the perfect “opposites attract” couple. I just loved how EVE’s eye orbs changed to a softer shape when she was “flirting” with WALL•E, that was an ingenious addition to her character that I thought Pixar added. It’s those subtle intricacies about their love story that make it so simple, yet so moving at the same time-which is just the film itself.

WALL•E has stolen my heart in cinema. This is, I believe, one of Pixar’s most daring films, starting with almost 30 minutes of no dialogue. Much of the story is told, then, only through images, and in this regard, it’s the most sophisticated and subtle film Pixar has yet made. It’s every bit the crowd-pleaser we have come to know and love about Pixar: romantic, funny, clever, witty, and absolutely imaginative. Even the short film before WALL•E, Presto, delivers a great beginning knockout with its silent-film-like action and humor, almost preparing you for what WALL•E is going to be like. This is Pixar’s magic.

You do not want to miss WALL•E! I don’t care if you are 2 or 82, you will LOVE WALL•E!

Content Warning: This is a Disney movie that is rated G…for GREAT!!!

Here is a movie that when I first saw the trailer for it, I was immediately on-board with due to the opportunities for greatness that I could see for Disney if they crafted the movie the right way….

…but, I was greatly disappointed. Disney could have made such a MUCH BETTER film if they would have actually stopped and thought about the possibilities of making fun of themselves in their own movie. I mean, think about it, you start out with a complete cliche cartoon of a movie, totally riding on the coat tails of every other Disney cartoon that has been made, and then you take that naive and vulnerable cartoon character and stick them right in the middle of real-life New York city and watch them learn how to be a human….that is revolutionary!

Yet, what did Disney do? They tried to achieve that level of greatness through cliche situations, chemistry-less romantic story lines that ended formulaic, characters that rarely showed any signs of real growth, and all of that combined with a cast that really left a lot to the imagination in terms of believability. There was just so much left on the cutting room floor, maybe even the pre-production floor, in terms of story and pace and character development that I was left with an abundance of over-flattery and fluff.

Though I was not impressed by the movie and at best, it was “cute” in its most basic form, one of the highlights was the acting of James Marsden as “Prince Edwards.” I really thought he did a decent job of “over-acting” his part as the chivalry inspired “good guy” in this film and if I laughed at all, it was from his performance. He seemed to have that tongue-in-cheek personality down very well and actually succeeded in providing me with mild humor.

In the end, it was another Disney let down that could have been so great…which I think a lot of modern-day-Disney movies have become lately. Movies that are hyped to be something out of the ordinary, something innovative, yet always fail and ultimately default to cheap humor and washed up and overplayed situation.

Content Warning: Rated PG for some scary images and mild innuendo. It’s Disney, so it’s pretty clean.