Wall-E

[Darwinist]

Anyone planning to see Wall-E this weekend?   According to rottentomatoes.com the US media is giving it overwhelmingly good reviews.   Looking forward to seeing it myself.  Looks like another winner for Pixar.

[DKT]

I'm planning on seeing it, and probably going to be taking my daughter.  It'll be the first movie she's seen in theaters.  She's VERY excited.  I'm hoping it's not too scary or anything (she got a little freaked out by the woman shooting at the rats at the beginning of Ratotouille).  I'm pretty excited, too.  I haven't heard anyone say a bad thing about it yet.

[Alasdair5000]

I'm a firm believer in the power of a REALLY good trailer.  And that shot of him looking up, with the Central Services music from Brazil playing?  I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  Definitely up for this:)

[birdless]

Pixar hasn't had a loser yet. I'm looking forward to seeing it, too. I hope to see it in the theaters, because i haven't seen a Pixar movie in the theater since Monster's, Inc.

[stePH]

Is it just me, or does Wall-E look exactly like Johnny-5?

[DKT]

I'm a firm believer in the power of a REALLY good trailer.  And that shot of him looking up, with the Central Services music from Brazil playing?  I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  Definitely up for this:)

When I saw that trailer in front of...whatever it was...I looked at my wife and said "That got me all weepy-eyed."  She looked back at me and said, "Me, too."  Damn, I love that woman.

Is it just me, or does Wall-E look exactly like Johnny-5?

I noticed that, too.  What I find interesting is that apparently the director hooked onto it after going to see a baseball game and becoming obsessed with his friends binoculars.  As if any similarity to Johnny 5 was totally coincidental (which it might be, but that was the first thing that came to my mind, too).

[wintermute]

It's a Pixar movie. So far, they;ve never been less than excellent, and WALL-E looks like it's going to be above average

[DarkKnightJRK]

Yep, wanna see it. I can't think of a better way to spend somewhere around an hour and a half then watching the misadventures of cute little robot.

[Russell Nash]

PIXAR!!!!

I need to find a new good English language theater and then I'm there. 

The funny thing is I've heard at least five different movie reviewers use the same phrase to describe different animated movies:  "It's really great.  Almost good enough to be Pixar."

[stePH]

Will this "Wall-E" make a cameo appearance?

[Swamp]

I saw this with my wife and kids (yes all four) this morning.  It was extremely good!  I highly recommend it to satisfy your sci-fi itch and also to make you laugh, and be moved at times; there's even a little romance.  Pixar made a very cool, fun, emotional film.  Their projects are so diverse it's hard to compare them, but I'd have to say that they have outdone themselves.  I was bored by Ratatouie (or however you spell it).  We didn't even buy it.  Cars was good, but a bit generic.  Wall-E restored my hopes that Pixar produces the most imaginitive, quality stories in the business.

[stePH]

I saw this with my wife and kids (yes all four) this morning.  It was extremely good!  I highly recommend it to satisfy your sci-fi itch and also to make you laugh, and be moved at times; there's even a little romance.  Pixar made a very cool, fun, emotional film.  Their projects are so diverse it's hard to compare them, but I'd have to say that they have outdone themselves.  I was bored by Ratatouie (or however you spell it).  We didn't even buy it.  Cars was good, but a bit generic.  Wall-E restored my hopes that Pixar produces the most imaginitive, quality stories in the business.

Pixar and Dreamworks are about even in my book.  For example, I thought Antz kicked the ass of A Bug's Life, but Shark Tale had its ass kicked hard by Finding Nemo.  (It's kind of funny how sometimes they both release similar films around the same time, but I'm sure that the production cycle of an all-GI film is long enough that it has to be coincidence.)

[bolddeceiver]

I'm just going to copy-paste the review I wrote in my livejournal...

I just saw WALL·E.

Best Pixar film yet. Best children's movie of the decade so far. Quite possibly best SF movie of the decade so far.

It's so cool to see a big-budget kids' movie try as much as this one does, and even better when they pull it off. For one, it's somewhat of a high-concept piece, as a film with very little meaningful dialogue. The story is told almost entirely visually, with very little exposition till far into the film. And yet it says so much in its reticence (and looking around the theatre I didn't see any bored children in the house, so clearly it didn't go over the heads of its target audience).

Second, it did a better job of dealing with heavy issues of how we treat the earth and the consequences of our consumer culture than I've ever seen in childrens' media. This comes from someone who first grasped the concept of "hamfisted" either while watching Fern Gully or Captain planet (don't remember which was first, but both set off alarums). Rather than the oversimplified "evil villain who wants to DESTROY THE ENVIRONMENT" theme presented in those, this actually presents complacency and convenience by totally well-meaning citizens as the culprit.

Plus, it's a great kids' film; lovable characters, pretty colors, and enough wink-winks put in to keep the grown-up who's roped into watching the DVD fifteen times in a row from wanting to commit suicide.

I'll add, in an SF setting, a little more on that side of it.  I mentioned in the review that I think it's possibly the best SF movies of the decade so far.  Some of that has to do with the dearth of good SF movies this decade.  But it truly is great SF.  A lot of childrens' SF just re-sets done-to-death plots with child-friendly characters and flashy colors.  This, I think, holds its own as interesting new SF.  Sure, there were scientific and technological imlausibilities, and plenty of anthropomorphism.  But there were also really interesting plot elements, including a great new twist it put on the time-tested "generation ship" plot.  The story essentially takes the role played by religion in "Universe" and so many of the other golden age generation ship stories and replaces it with consumer comforts.

And the symbolic possibilities of the progression from photorealism to CGI as the humans progressively lost agency in their own fates... *good shiver*

I'll stop wasting people's time, but honestly I could go on for pages about how much I liked this movie.

[eytanz]

I just came back from seeing Wall-E. It was wonderful; I enjoyed every minute of it. And it looks like it's a great movie to see with kids - I didn't have any to bring, but since I saw a matinee the crowd was full of them, many of them quite young, and after the first few minutes they were all silent, engrossed in the film. There's an emotional moment towards the end where the soundtrack goes silent for a noticable amount of time (30 seconds or so), and the entire theater was silent with it - I didn't even hear people move.

What I liked best was how it was in many ways cynical and satirical, but at the heart of it it was optimistic. It sincerely believes that in the end, man (and machine) will make the right choices. It was quite effective in that - it's been years since I've felt any genuine optimism about humanity, but, at least for the length of this movie, I believed it.

[oddpod]

not sean it yet but it looks fab!

just wondering ......
dose any one see a resembalance between luxor jur, the littel tabul lamp from the first ever pixar short and wally? i recon thare is some "coming full circul" shinanigans going on thare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZMg-h_3aPU

[DKT]

We took our daughter to see it this weekend.  It was pretty amazing and is hard to beat.  Quite an ambitious project for a kids movie (although Pixar is great at speaking to the young and the old).  Very funny and very touching. 

Now, I seriously need to get a "CAUTION: Rogue Robots" icon for my LJ or something...

[Heradel]

I have to say, my favorite shot of the movie was that pan to the right when they showed the progressive decline of the fitness of the captains.

[Darwinist]

Saw it over the weekend with the family and thought it was great.  The previous posters to this thread have said it all.  What did you think of the short film before Wall-E (rabbit v. magician -can't remember the name).  I liked that also.  Very clever. 

[Niai]

I saw it at the weekend with my wife and 5-year-old son. I thought it was great, first kids film I've seen that was 'propper' SciFi, OK, there was ound in space and a few other bits, but the concepts were sound, and as one othe poster said it had an optimistic feel.

That's something I realise has been missing fom both science fiction and out curture in general for a good couple of decades, a sense that we can actually cacheive something, change the world for the better.

I hope to see more of this, I really do, I didn't realise how much I missed it.

[Alasdair5000]

Best movie I've seen this year.  Easily one of the two best animated movies of the last twenty years and one of the five best SF movies of the last ten.
  What impressed me the most about was how honest it was.  I always remember the day my inner cynic finally woke up and it was in the middle of Forrest bloody Gump.  After two hours, during one of the 'AND NOW YOU WILL CRY!' scenes I remember my friend Janet leaning over and whispering 'People are crying!' in the same way someone else would say 'Look!  A dog with two heads!'

   So I hate that crap, basically.  I hate movies that go 'FEEL SAD NOW!' especially as at least some of the time, they work.

   This though, was different.  Just a very honest, very open story where all the emotion comes from tiny little things.  Tiny little things I will attempt to spoiler colour just in case people haven't seen it yet...

-The Captain standing up, a literal and metaphorical action that's tiny and completely heroic.

-The moment where MO jumps off the line he's always followed.

-The way that when we see WALL-E looking after EVE for months from his point of view it's funny and later, when she sees it, it's completely sweet and caring.

Amazingly good movie.  Anyone who hasn't seen it should.