Film Review: Wall-E
Pixar struck last summer with one of the best movies of the year in Ratatouille. In fact, Pixar is hands down one of the best movie studios, animated or otherwise, in business today. Naturally I have been eagerly anticipating their latest, Wall-E, for a while.
At this point a large majority of people are familiar with Pixar’s films. Their body of work is simply spectacular, with personal favorites of mine such as Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., and the aforementioned Ratatouille. Even mentioning those is difficult, because I am leaving out a lot of classics like Toy Story.
Pixar does not even need a feature-length movie to impress. Wall-E’s opening short film, Presto, is honestly better than a lot of two hour films. Five minutes of a magician and a rabbit and I am already laughing and grinning like an eight-year-old. The level of production and creativity at Pixar is mind-boggling.
Wall-E is both a continuation of their tradition, and at the same time a completely fresh creation.
Wall-E will feel familiar to long-time Pixar fans. Top-notch computer animation, clever character design, and plenty of humor. Wall-E is genuinely funny, and had me and the audience laughing out loud frequently. In addition to its visuals and comedy, Wall-E has a fantastic storyline. The amount of character development in this “kid” movie is so beautifully crafted it puts most live-action movies to shame. By the end of the film my level of emotional investment was simply indescribable.
Part of this was due to the inspired direction taken by Pixar. In Wall-E’s 100 minute runtime, I would estimate there are 25 minutes of dialogue. In fact there is none to be found for the first 45 minutes. The ability to convey feeling and advance the plot without language is utterly brilliant. Wall-E is Pixar’s most artistic, and in my opinion, genius film to date. Wall-E discusses love and loneliness on a human level without ever saying a word.
Expressing what made the movie so great is somewhat challenging. It really is the sum of Wall-E’s parts that propelled it to greatness. Its wonderful lead character, its sense of adventure, its humor, and perhaps most importantly its level of artistry all combine to form what could end up being the best movie of the year.
Perfection is a strong word, but Wall-E comes extremely close to achieving it. Wall-E is an exquisite piece of cinema that has a perfect balance of entertainment and narrative. It is intelligent, bursting with creativity, and quite honestly inspiring. I cannot recommend this incredible work of art enough.
10/10
16 Comments
i am a fan of pixar. i have greatly enjoyed MOST of their movies. the animation, however, has be spectacular in ALL of their movies. i don’t think anyone can argue that they are not the best in animation. however, i think that this story looks boring an no dialogue is kinda gay. I have not seen this film and don’t plan on it because my dad, who is a bigger pixar fan than me said, “the animation was out of this world, but the story just got boring and old, i dozed off many times.” this coming from my dad is more than enough to make me save 8 dollars.
Very nice post — I think that you captured the film well. I also highly recommend it to people of all ages! One of my favorite things about the film was it’s ability to draw you in so much that you did not even realize that there was no dialogue. During the first couple of minutes i noticed it, but not until the end did I realize how much “dialogue-deficient” it was. It was fantastically and ingeniously done.
Excellent movies with subtitles draw me in, and I cannot even remember I’m reading the words, so I understand that Wall-E has a similar potential to do that. But, and this is a big BUT, 10/10? Are you kidding me? No animated movie will ever be a 10/10, and possibly no other movie ever. TJ Laird needs to say something about this.
I do not think animation/live-action should play a role in a movie’s score. If it is a great movie, it does not matter whether the actors are human or animated. Wall-E has a great story, great music, great characters, great score (soundtrack)…it is fantastic all around. Do not let the fact that it is an animated movie be the deciding factor before you even see the film. It still had real storyboards, a real director, and a ton of people who worked to make the movie as great as it was.
A 10/10 does not mean absolute perfection…as I wrote, it just means that the movie came very close. Wall-E is the best movie of 2008 so far.
10/10 is perfection. You can’t get any better than a 10 on a scale of 10. So how can you say it’s not perfection?
if the movie came close to perfection it should be a 9.9.
mark, your dad was right. this film appeals to young kids and women. justin, please check to make sure you are not one of these.
the film is far from perfect. it has funny parts, but so did little man, and epic movie, both of which i would rather see again than wall-e, which may as well be called wally’s world, because its more boring than walking around wal-mart for an hour and a half.
I thought that Wall-E was funny in a cute way. I think the negative comments are funny in a stupid way (sort of like how Epic Movie is funny, to borrow airxxi’s example). I am not saying the authors are stupid, but their comments certainly lack the brilliance and intelligence that Wall-E undoubtedly had in spades.
Basically, it seems like the people who are complaining believe that if a movie does not have dialogue, it is immediately doomed to being another meaningless piece of cinema (once again, like Epic Movie). It appears those of you who actually subscribe to this belief missed the point entirely. That’s not surprising, though, since the movie assumes that you are smart enough to draw your own conclusions about the plot instead of having it told to you. By the end of the movie, it is still shoved right down your throat (and I do mean shoved, I was surprised that the subtleties of the script faded away so quickly . In fact, my biggest problem with the movie was that it refused to let me think entirely for myself). Really, absolutely nothing was left unexplained.
If this movie had words, you would really just be watching a Director’s Cut of An Inconvenient Truth where Al Gore wears a trash can and a tin foil hat, chuckling as he inserts old home movies of him and Tipper making out in the back of a station wagon parked in a freezer, lest their excess body heat melt the ice caps ever so slightly as to cause an endangered penguin to fall, landing in the gaping, patient jaws of a freshly freed Willy. As hilarious as that would be, that was not the movie Pixar wanted to make. They wanted something provocative, something no animated movie had done before. I applaud them for trying, and (in my opinion) succeeding. In a time where the theaters are flooded with trash (man, Epic Movie, what can’t you be used as an example for? Well, besides a quality film), Wall-E takes risks and makes great strides in earning animated films true respect.
In the film, Wall-E risks it all to save not only Earth, but humanity itself. Instead of respecting his bravery, you lambast him with disapproval of the fact that he even tried in the first place. Wall-E didn’t let you down, you let him down, AUTO.
no, wall-e’s just gay.
no dialogue in this movie wasnt a problem for me. the storyline was poorly written and simply not fun. sure it was cute, as was presto, and they are both works of animation genius, but as entertainment, not much of what i’d enjoy watching. like i said in my review, i cant think of a scene id like to watch again…
Jaws, I never said no dialogue was a problem for me either. I love possibly a more wider variety of movies than anyone I know. My problem was simply that jbomb gave this movie a 10/10.
jaws i think you are gay.
Me: 10/10, five stars, two thumbs up. Rotten Tomatoes: 97%. IMDB: 8.9/10. Meta Critic: Critics 94/100 | Users 9.1/10 Rolling Stone: Editiors 4/4 | Users 3.5/4 It is obviously a hit among a majority of people. It’s a perfect movie in my book.
@Mario: Rarely have I seen such universal praise for a movie. I think it shows how truly great Wall-E is.
RIT is gay for this.
Tizbook.com doesn’t give it a 10/10. It was good, but not 10/10 good. Not even my favorite Pixar film.
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