Review: A Quicky About A Robot

I'm still not sure how I'm going to treat this blog in the near future, but I did want to give a quick review, because I saw something worth acknowledging. That thing is Wall-E. And since I've been told that my reviews are too long, I'll keep it short: it kicked ass. That good enough?

Well, no, it's not for me certainly. But I'll keep it simple. This movie is my favorite Pixar movie, and I loved every Pixar movie I saw (which is all of them but Cars, incidentally.) It was tailor-made for me, though. Speculative future, satire working its way into sociological discussion, robots and technology in general; if it wasn't for the fact there was no possible way to get cute goth women into the movie, it would be perfect.

The movie is divided into two parts; there's the nearly dialogue-free first third, as Wall-E, the last sentient thing left on Earth continues to do his automated job while looking for the little pleasure of life that keep him going for seven hundred years. Not bad for a robot. The second half of the movie moves beyond Earth as Wall-E discovers the fate of humanity since his activation.

Much of what made this movie special has been said elsewhere, so I'll stick to a few things that made this film my favorite Pixar movie. There was the surprisingly dark storyline, especially for a Pixar movie, which suggested a doomed Earth and possibly a lot of dead humans. There was the simplicity of the main characters and how they acted, with a minimum of dialogue and brilliant reactions and emotive displays to compensate. There was the future of humanity, presented as neither dystopian as we normally see it and yet horrible in its own way. There was the art itself, with the bright future and the ruined Earth both masterpieces of design, and the brief scenes of space in between were awe-inspiring.

The biggest complaint I could have about the movie was an occasional logical detail that slightly warped my suspension of disbelief. None of them bothered me, and assuming you can accept the premise that robots either were programmed to develop feelings or somehow gained them despite the programming, I'm guessing neither will you. The movie gets and enthusiastic A+ from me.

And I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the short at the beginning. This battle between a magician and his rabbit sidekick was a hilarious, possibly Portal-inspired bit of Chuck Jones-y slapstick.