The other day I decided I needed to do something, rather than lying around and wasting away in my flat, so I went and watched Pixar’s latest attempt at capitalizing on our emotions. I’ve not seen a Pixar movie for quite some time, but I was genuinely interested in Wall-E, it seemed like a different type of animated feature than the others they make, and I thought the film would have some themes that would interest me, the poster alone sold me. All this turned out to be correct, to an extent.
First off, I want to congratulate Pixar on probably the most archaic dystopian future I’ve ever seen in an animated film. None of that “everything’s going to turn to shit” like Akira, still none of that happy future crap that The Jetsons rambled about, but a wonderful mix. Wall-E feels like a genuine attempt at innovating a much too stagnant genre, and the film does feel rewarding as such. The film also makes a brave attempt at no dialogue, but using visual communication instead. It does seem as the Pixar team wishes to challenge themselves, and they succeed at it. The first hour or so is probably the most wonderful I’ve ever seen of any animated films, the visual humour, the subtle touches, the wonderful art-design, it all comes together perfectly. The development of the relationship between Wall-E and Eve feels natural and actually does touch the audience, probably because all excess dialogue is not in place, and the emotions of the robots seem more reliable than most humans do on screen. The humour is also well placed and sweet, small gags are found everywhere, and at times it feels like an old Chaplin movie.
Sadly though, as the film progresses it falls into the all too familiar cliché’s of the cartoon genre, and while the first half is innovative and original, the second half does give me the feeling of seeing something in repeat. We’ve all seen this before, tenfold of times, the progression of the narrative couldn’t feel more formulaic. I won’t bother to list it here, if you’ve seen it or will see it, you will know what I’m talking about. It’s tragic, this film had so much going for it, but as it goes on the uniqueness falls away and lays the ground to familiarity. To me it feels like two completely different movies, it’s like the producer let the production team do whatever they wanted, and then in the middle of production noticed they were trying to be original, and handed them the list of do’s and don’ts in Disney animation. It’s unflatteringly apparent, this was a film about the loneliness and romantic illusions of a robot cleaning trash, and ended up as a “connect the dots” Disney romantic film, with the occasional action scene and unmotivated prick bad guy in the way.
I guess I’m a bit mean, the film still has many saving graces, like fantastic art design and inspired choice of music. The ruins and remains of earth have never looked better, and the design of the robots look great and realistic, the contrast between the design of Eve and Wall-E is good, the cinematography really adds to the story and emotion. Even though the film does take an unfortunate turn, you do feel emotionally connected to the robots throughout the film, and the end does give a slight feeling of satisfaction. I’m not really sure exactly what Wall-E has to say, but it does feel like the creators took their time to develop themes. I guess its life affirming, like everything else this damn production company puts out. As said, there isn’t much dialogue, but the major part of it is provided by Jeff Garlin, who I love and respect, so while I feel the dialogue isn’t very welcome, it couldn’t have been provided by a better person, so cheers for that.
In the end though, I would say Wall-E is a significantly successful film, and probably one of the best Disney/Pixar animations I’ve ever seen. It’s sad though, as it could have been so much better. At the end of the film I did feel slightly disappointed, I don’t know why though, the film turned out to be better than I expected. I guess because parts of this was absolutely fantastic, and I was wanting more, but kept being let down as the film progressed. Still, I would recommend this to anyone, although it does seem that someone in Pixar things doing things too differently will hurt our brains.
No comments:
Post a Comment