WALL• E

[hedwig]

when Wall•E and Eve dance in space

that was the MOMENT OF THE YEAR for me. i wanted to kiss the screen.

i love this movie with all my heart. i am dying to see it again. it's not preachy. Happy Feet is preachy. in fact, the shitty animated trailers before the film only intensified my appreciation for pixar's fearless envelope-pushing. this is some straight-up classic sci-fi. my GAWD i don't think i've ever seen outer space depicted so beautifully! amazing stuff. one small criticism: i was a little distracted by the live-action willard. especially when they'd cut back from live action willard to animated garlin. that was a little weird. but it's a minor complaint, this movie is pretty much perfect. best film of the year (so far) and probably the best thing i've seen since Blood.

[72teeth]

yea, im in love too... as much as i didn't want to pull my gaze from the screen, i did once just to see how the rest of the theater was doing and not one face wasn't fixed with big eyes and a smile... this is what its all about...

[hedwig]

speaking of audience reactions.. it always sucks seeing pixar movies with other human beings in the room. really. you'd think having a bunch of children looking up in amazement would add to the experience but it totally doesn't. kids are just annoying. they are. like this one kid sitting nearby repeating "is this the movie? is this the movie?" during every trailer and then continuing during the movie. when he finally realized that it was, indeed, the movie, he stopped asking and announced loudly that he knew what was going to happen! the one robot is going to fall in love with the other robot. and then when it finally did happen, he pointed out to everyone that he was right. then he moved on to a new set of questions: who is that? why is she angry? is she dead? my heart wanted to be warmed by this little boy's innocence and curiosity, but instead i just felt the urge to turn around and scream at the parents to teach their child some fucking manners. it's not just the little kids, though. a grown woman sitting behind me found it appropriate to say "that's disgusting" every single time the cockroach appeared onscreen. after the movie i assaulted her in the parking lot.

[Stefen]

That's why I carry a gun to the movies. If a child pisses me off, I shoot it in the face. The other kids in the theater shut the fuck up when they realize what will happen if they don't.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

speaking of audience reactions.. it always sucks seeing pixar movies with other human beings in the room. really. you'd think having a bunch of children looking up in amazement would add to the experience but it totally doesn't. kids are just annoying. they are. like this one kid sitting nearby repeating "is this the movie? is this the movie?" during every trailer and then continuing during the movie. when he finally realized that it was, indeed, the movie, he stopped asking and announced loudly that he knew what was going to happen! the one robot is going to fall in love with the other robot. and then when it finally did happen, he pointed out to everyone that he was right. then he moved on to a new set of questions: who is that? why is she angry? is she dead? my heart wanted to be warmed by this little boy's innocence and curiosity, but instead i just felt the urge to turn around and scream at the parents to teach their child some fucking manners. it's not just the little kids, though. a grown woman sitting behind me found it appropriate to say "that's disgusting" every single time the cockroach appeared onscreen. after the movie i assaulted her in the parking lot.

As much as I sympathize with the inconvenience you've experienced watching the film, reading that was the funniest thing all week.

[Reinhold]

i caught this tonight and i can already see the banners. (eg: lighter, spork)

others have already gotten to most of what i'd like to say except that I thought the end credit sequence was one of the best i've seen in years. i thought the animation of the character WALL E was flawless, the main characters were magic together, and i didn't find it too preachy at all.  plus, i loved the use of the  mac boot sound.

I can't wait to take my little brother to this.

[Ravi]

Hedwig, sorry your experience wasn't better.  I didn't hear any talking or signs of boredom when I saw this film.

Random things I liked about the film:

The barely anthropomorphized robots.  Not overly cute or human/animal-like.

Wall-E and Eve's space dance

Fred Willard's character was clearly a knock at the President.

Buy N' Large's creepy corporate dominance over everything and the colony of fat, consumerist, semi-literate humans (even if irony of this being produced by Disney and being merchandised to hell isn't lost on me)

Jeff Garlin

Hopeful message that even if the Earth was turned into a wasteland it can be restored.

The dustiness of Earth and vastness of the garbage piles

The incorporation of live action

[matt35mm]

Buy N' Large's creepy corporate dominance over everything and the colony of fat, consumerist, semi-literate humans (even if irony of this being produced by Disney and being merchandised to hell isn't lost on me)

The very last thing at the end of the credits is a big Buy N' Large logo, as though they were co-producer/co-distributer.

[modage]

i'm with mac.  this was probably more admirable than enjoyable.  it was DARK!

SPOILERS
i'm not sure how WALL•E got his memory back at the end.  i think at that point they should've had Eve just hang out with him for hundreds of years till he eventually started to gain a personality again.  it would've been sadder and more awesome. 

liked the film, loved the short.

[Astrostic]

spoilers

I'm more in the camp that likes the first bits leading up to when they go to space, and then despising much of the rest.  Formally it reminded me a lot of Monster's Inc. with its brilliant set up and then big chase ending, only the last moments of the Monster's Inc. ending were infinitely better than the sappy, inexplicable ending of Wall-E.  I had heard of the homages to classic sci-fi before seeing the film, and I expected to enjoy them, but I was just annoyed when the mainframe of the ship was a HAL rip-off.  Then they had to throw in the 2001 theme song to let everyone know what they were referencing in case it went over their heads the first 3 or 4 times they showed us that the ship resembled HAL.  I hated that it turned into a Green will conquer all message film.  I wouldn't have minded it so much if the Wall-E/EVE relationship had stayed at the front of it all, but the two bots were pretty much limited to screaming out each others' names for the last half hour that they were on the ship.  I think I would have thought that this was "just okay" anyway, but it didn't help that every time there was a touching moment in the film all of the girls in the theatre had to let out a whimpering "awww" and oohhhhh" and that the slightest comedy (or in some places, attempts at comedy) were greeted with huge chuckles and barrel laughs.  I would put this as my least favorite Pixar, a massive disappointment coming from the man who directed my favorite one, Finding Nemo.

Also, I would have hoped that the two robot leads could have been more unisex instead of the male and female robots.  And I really had to cringe when they had the wonderful Hello Dolly moment shown on an iPod.  I mean really?  It makes me worried that Apple will push Pixar into more and more of a promotional tool in the future.

[john]

Fucking wonderful.

I was swooning the entire time - on a technical and emotional level. Probably the most sincere cinematic romance since that fucking Sandler comedy with the chick from Red Dragon.

[MacGuffin]

Cracking Open Pixar's 'Wall-E' Easter Eggs
Source: MTV

You might know that the biggest summer movie this year not involving superheroes is "Wall-E," Pixar's latest and greatest animated film. You might even be anxious to see it this weekend. But will you see everything? Like every Pixar movie, "Wall-E" is filled with Easter Eggs hidden throughout. Like what?

– In an article, I explored whether "Wall-E" was a cautionary tale about the environment. I'll spoil it for you: It most certainly is. But don't think the folks at Pixar aren't at least acknowledging their own part in the problem. In the movie, Wall-E has a collection of unique trash he finds particularly interesting. One of those pieces of junk? "Hammy," John Ratzenberger proclaimed of his "Toy Story" character. "He shows up in Wall-E's junk pile."

– Ratzenberger, himself is something of an Easter Egg, although less so in this film than in others. Dubbed Pixar's good luck charm, the former "Cheers" barfly has voiced a character in every one of the animation studio's films to date. He has possibly his biggest role yet in "Wall-E," playing John, an inhabitant of the luxury space cruiser.

– All the Pixar movies make reference to A113, "the classroom at CalArts where a lot of us went to college," director Andrew Stanton explained. In "Wall-E," the number is the prime directive for Auto, the spaceship's automatic pilot.

– Speaking of Auto, his character is one of the few robots in the film not "voiced" by legendary sound designer Ben Burtt. He could've been voiced by you – really. Auto's voice is provided by MacTalk, an Apple computer speaking program.

– In virtually every movie since "Toy Story," the Pizza Planet truck has made an appearance. It's in "Wall-E" too "Well the Pizza Planet truck makes a QUICK appearance [but] a lot of people don't seem to catch it," Stanton grinned. "It's funny. The really quick ones catch it. It's in the first half of the movie." Where exactly in the film? Well you wouldn't want us to tell you everything would you?

[cine]

right now pubrick is rolling over in his BED.™

loved it. and so genius in that we've seen this story a million times before but since it was made by brilliant people, the laughs were richer and the payoffs were bigger. my audience applauded when the Captain got up to defeat the HAL robot with Thus Spake Zarathustra playing. well over a hundred people in the theatre.. maybe 3 kids. during one of the funny scenes, one of the kids was asking his parents why it was funny. and THAT was funny.

[picolas]

spoilers

Also, I would have hoped that the two robot leads could have been more unisex instead of the male and female robots.  And I really had to cringe when they had the wonderful Hello Dolly moment shown on an iPod.  I mean really?  It makes me worried that Apple will push Pixar into more and more of a promotional tool in the future.

why is a unisexual relationship that important? aside from just being different/not cliched i guess? and i think the only thing that distinctly makes wall e or eve gendered is their voices. and you can't just not have them make sounds/communicate in the name of unisex.

the use of an ipod is just a good idea. it's something that'll be around for a bit. i don't think there's a hint of 'promotion' in its usage. it's not like ipods need advertising.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

I don't think it was just the iPod for Apple's sneaky promotion, also the sound Wall-e made when his recharge cycle became full (Mac OS).

I've become rather disappointed with the recommendations from you people. Once upon a time, I could trust the people of Xixax to make educated and worthwhile reviews about films they've recently seen. For example, I made it an obligation to see this from all the positive feedback. I thought, "Wow this is going to be like no other animated film..." but in reality, that's exactly what it was, another Ice Age or whatever. Granted the first 30 minutes of the film were great and the sound engineering was just perfect but come on! Don't give in so easily because the damn thing was animated! It was sentimental at parts and I felt like it tried to communicate more to the older crowd than the young but even so, it never came close to the emotional lengths of Studio Ghibli's work. Those are animated films too, but on a totally different scale and I can't help but compare them. Pixar has a long way to go. Good efforts but I wouldn't be recommending this as anything more than "just another animated Pixar film". To go back to what Mod and Mac have said, admirable at parts.