Now, I'm sure many of you can tell that I'm a Pixar fan after reading my review of Cars 2. And, I'm also sure you're tired of reading me saying "I don't care what critics say, this is a GOOD movie", since that's pretty much a summary of what I've said in almost all my reviews. Well the good news is, I'm not going to do that in THIS review. Now that that is settled, I will begin my review.
WALL-E
As many of my friends in Lotus Fleet (great Star Trek fleet, room for plenty of new members!) who've read my favorite Pixar movie poll can tell you, this movie is not my cup of tea. While many critics say it is one of Pixar's greatest acheivments, I must disagree. To begin with, the story is not all that engaging. We start seeing Wall-E cleaning up garbage. Remember all those funny scenes we saw in the trailers? Well, that pretty much is everything they have in this scene. Then EVE comes in. Wall-E meets her, shows her a plant he found, and she shuts down. What follows is a boring montage showing Wall-E despretly taking care of her and falling in love with her. While some may find this whole first act charming, I found it dull. Don't hate me for this, but I have a hard time caring about Wall-E. My reason is this: I can't relate to him. Sure he's inquisitive. Sure he has emotions. But the truth is, with a limited speech ability, and no real facial expression beyond 'normal' and 'eyes up', it's hard for me to connect with him, therefore it's hard for me to care about him. And the first act is just to slow. To my readers who have seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it's like that, only slower. And honestly, the only part of it that I fought pushed it in TMP was the second act. The rest of it I was engaged. And while Wall-E may pick up after the first act, it still never fully recovers. Seeing the fate of the human race in the furure is intresting and all, but it still didn't connect with me. And I'm going to get this out of the way right now, I know many people will say Cars was slow, but the truth is, it was meant to be, and you got so engaged with the charecters, you just didn't care. At least I didn't. But with Wall-E I've no connection to the charecters, therefore I'm left wondering when the movie will end. Anyways, EVE and Wal-E make it to the spaceship where they encounter resistance to bringing the plant to the captain. Eventually they discover that the ships robotic pilot itself is under orders from the previous ruler of Earth not to let anyone back for fear that Earth was permanently uninhabitable. While I like this twist, and great protrayal of a villian in an all-ages movie, it's just to late to save it. In the end, the ship lands and everything's hunky-dorry. However, the movie is not. The visuals are standard Pixar fair, which is to say, they're phenomanal. But awe-inspiring imagry cannot take away the films mediocraty. Maybe I'm just weird, (well I actually am, but that's beside the point.) but I can't care about what happens to the charecters. I can wacth the scene whare Wall-E almost dies without feeling the slightest emotion because a) this is a kids movie, therefore his survival is a given, and b) I just don't care. I know Pixar tried, but this is their only movie where the chareters don't connect to me, and make me care about them, mainly because most of them can't protray their emotions in ways I understand, if at all. Even in Cars 2 I felt sorry for Mater when he realizes that every one looks down on him, mainly because I go through almost the exact same thing. Therefore, I relate. I 'm sorry if this review dragged on, but I had to make my point. Bottom Line: While this may be a fine movie for certain people, it's just not for me. I like pretty much every Pixar movie (the only one Ican't say for sure is A Bug's Life, because I last saw that when I was six, therefore I don't remember a whole lot about it), but Wall-E just doesn't do it for me. To me, Wall-E is Pixar's biggest failure, and most overrated film.
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