WaaaaAAAAAlll-E

LATE! Everything's LATE! (I've mostly written my BSG finale review. Good thing I'm not getting paid for this. Then again, if I had been this would have been on time. And had better punctuation.)

Since I've written this a week ago there has been a rather amusing WALL-E lash/backlash. Go look for it. Laugh. You'll read it again in a minute: We get FTL. We win.

Ah. Well, I've made my first mistake this morning: I read Lileks before I wrote my WALL-E review. Oh, well.

PERFECT. Like, Incredibles perfect. Like, when do I get to see it again perfect.

Ok, elephant in the room time: "Hey, ain't you a planet hating Republican?" Why, yes. And that's one of the many things I LOVED about this movie. I've been muttering somewhat cynically (it's what I do best) that this movie depicts a world where we've "used up the Earth". Well, that's supposed to be the end, isn't it? Nope. We are able to move a goodly chunk of the populace into very comfortable space while we put the Earth back together. I call that a win! But now I've seen the movie, it's even BETTER! It isn't a BSG "Oh, it sucks to be out in space and everyone is DEAD." No! Everyone is ludicrously comfortable! So much so that we're supposed to 'tsk tsk' at them for their obviously over-done comfort! For a rampantly consumerist society, they've managed to develop an enclosed environment that thrives at "MORE MORE MORE!" levels for SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS. (I'm sure there's a dark side: Soylent Green - in a cup!) And the other thing that no-one has touched on? They're all NICE. We only meet a few people in the movie, but they're all friendly, well meaning, and, ok, maybe more than a little bored. We should hope for such a future. Oh, and we've apparently developed CRAZY good FTL. Not bad for a dying species. (Oh, and they all seem to be, well, American. *cough*)

Plus, it's NOT global warming. It's not carbon footprints. It's not the ozone layer. (It's a little Haliburton.) It's good old fashioned post-apocalyptic pollution. It's not a warning, it's a McGuffin. (And it's GORGEOUS.)

But enough of all that. Oh, this is a wondrous film. WALL-E has heart and soul to spare. He's just so... so... well, blast it, he's CUTE. He's everything anyone gets into animation for in the first place. There was much concern (still voiced by people who haven't seen the movie) about a kids movie with no talking for the first 40 minutes or so. Hey, there was no talking in Tom and Jerry or the good Pink Panther cartoons. Or Roadrunner for that matter. And this is sublime. In ten minutes alone you'll get joy, wonder, laughs, and melancholy despair. For a start. The last few days bits of the movie have been popping back into my head. (WALL-E before he has his morning sun, for example.) Some of the beginning almost has an "I am Legend" vibe.

The trailers for the movie are just about right. There are a couple of shots that I'd take out. But 1) they lie to you (my favorite trailer technique) and 2) they show you enough to get you into the movie and hold a LOT back. So this will be brief because the movie moves into spoiler territory rapidly. There's a stretch of the movie that pretty much is just the first trailer. (WALL-E hitting himself in the head with the paddle-ball is still making me laugh.)

I can't go into much about EVE (certainly not All About EVE) without spoilage. But I love that it's the GIRL who is the "kill everything that moves psycho robot". Heh. Again, it's the Superman / Lois Lane thing: It's not that EVE is THAT lovable. It's that WALL-E loves her SO much. The scenes on Earth after EVE meets her "directive" are some of the sweetest in movies ever. You'll never look at Pong again without giggling.

Gee, WALL-E starts up with a Mac sound and EVE looks like a flying iPod. Who owns this company?

Pixar continues to be Story Writing 101. Everything pays off. The movie runs on rails. It's so tight it squeaks. Why don't THESE guys write an Indiana Jones movie? I'm sure this will be even better a second time around when you know where it all goes.

This is Pixar doing sci-fi. Ohhhhhhhh! It's so BEAUTIFUL!

From Wikipedia: "After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt they "had really achieved the physics of believing you were really under water, so I said 'Hey, let’s do that with air.' Let’s fix our lenses, let’s get the depth of field looking exactly how anamorphic lenses work and do all these tricks that make us have the same kind of dimensionality that we got on Nemo with an object out in the air and on the ground.'"[5] Producer Jim Morris added that the film was animated so that it would feel "as if there really was a cameraman".[8] Dennis Muren was hired to advise Pixar on replicating science fiction films from the 1960s and 1970s, including elements such as 70 mm frames, barrel distortion and lens flare.[9][10] Scale models were made for Muren, which he used to teach Pixar."

Muren! The Old Man of ILM! Jinkies! Pixar is the CG studio that is trying to look like MOVIES instead of video games. Stanton is slated to do John Carter of Mars next. How Pixar will pull that off, I have no idea. But at least it will look like David Lean instead of Michael Bay.

And the sound. It's Ben Burtt. The man who gave us lightsabers and R2-D2. Who re-popularized the Wilhelm Scream. Oh, all movies should sound like this. Thirty years later and he's still amazing.

And if you're as obsessive as I am, stay for the credits. It's cool. Not Iron Man or Pirates cool. But cool.

So, yeah, I liked it.

Go.