On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 1/43 |
Kim Hollis |
It's a movie I will watch again and again. I would never ever have believed a robot could make me cry, but... |
| 1/21 |
Jason Lee |
An wildly successful, ambitious and imaginative epic from Pixar. |
| 3/31 |
Les Winan |
Phenomenal in every way. |
| 5/98 |
David Mumpower |
I love the first half of the movie, but the part with the humans does feel a bit forced and awkward. The start is as good as Pixar gets (i.e. perfect) but it fails to sustain momentum. |
| 6/52 |
Sean Collier |
When will we see a romance this strong again? |
| 13/31 |
John Seal |
The first 20 minutes are magical |
| 29/196 |
Max Braden |
Despite amazing visuals, I wasn't blown away as much as many others are because I prefer more action/adventure from Pixar. This was like something you'd see at Epcot Center. |
Ah, Pixar. Glorious, glorious Pixar.
It's rare that you find a movie studio that never, ever goes wrong. Things happen. Wachowskis rise and fall. In the quest for the big money grab, plenty of companies are more than willing to greenlight garbage that should never see the light of day.
Pixar is different.
In their constant quest for quality, Pixar has established the kind of expectations that would be ludicrous if they didn't have proof of excellence behind them already. Even the movie that most people consider their lowest in quality, A Bug's Life, would be a super duper hit for someone like Sony or DreamWorks and far exceeding most everything they've done previously. How do they keep doing it?
The answer is that Pixar consistently strives to deliver stories that are captivating and entertaining for both children and the young at heart. When you look back at the most glorious animated films of the past two decades, the list is dominated by Toy Story and its sequel, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and Ratatouille. Since the Academy Awards introduced the Best Animated Feature award in 2002, Pixar has taken home the prize three times, and there were two years where there was no Pixar release. People equate Pixar with quality, and there's no reason that they shouldn't.
And so after covering toys, bugs, monsters, fish, superheroes, cars and rats, Pixar is moving to robots. Sure, the movie Robots was an epically bad film, but every sign out there indicates that Pixar is much more on track than their Blue Sky brethren.
Let's start by noting that WALL•E is written and directed by Andrew Stanton. If you don't recognize the name, that's okay. It's enough to know that he previously wrote and directed Finding Nemo, a little movie that happened to earn $70 million in its opening weekend and $340 million by the time its domestic run was over. It took in an additional $525 million overseas, too.
Of course, Stanton also had a hand in the screenplays for Monsters, Inc., Toy Story 1 and 2 and A Bug's Life. Like Brad Bird and John Lasseter, he's a mainstay for the studio, and absolutely knows how to deliver the goods.
The trailers and previews for WALL•E do seem to play this theory out. Not only is WALL•E, the lead character in the film, absolutely adorable, but the story about a little robot who might be able to save humanity has the perfect root for the underdog quality that children and adults love. He's almost a modern day E.T. Though he's metal instead of cuddly, you can't help but want to give the little guy a hug. And his girlfriend Eve is slick, shiny and stunning. This is a love/hero story that audiences can embrace, and the promise of numerous sequences in outer space is just gravy. Like the other Pixar flicks before it, WALL•E should strike a big chord with audiences and make Pixar and the Walt Disney Company bucket loads of cash. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
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