Wall-E

My son is a HUGE Pixar fan. My wife and I don't often get to see movies in the theater because our son is too young. We didn't think he would sit through anything that has come out recently until now. My son knows "Toy Story" backwards and forwards. He loves "Monsters, Inc." He has seen "Cars" a hundred times, and "Ratatouille" is catching up. Again, he LOVES Pixar. With this in mind, we took him to see Wall-E today.

I knew coming into this that there would be minimal dialog. Being a huge Star Wars fan, I am used to robots communicating through beeps and whistles, so I didn't think I would mind.

The movie starts by introducing Wall-E, whose name comes is an acronym of Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class. Humans have all left the Earth 700 years prior, and he is the only robot left still functioning in his capacity as a global janitor. He has created lots of trash skyscrapers, and it is obvious that he is making slow progress.

Wall-E collects certain things that interest him. He found a tape of a Musical, and he has learned at least one song from it. This song continues to play throughout the film.

Eventually he is introduced to EVE. She turns out to be one of the better characters in this movie. Her first few scenes have her blasting anything that startles her with a high-powered laser. The explosions are pretty cool.

The movie progresses from there, and Wall-E ends up following EVE to space when she gets whisked away. Wall-E meets some other robots along the way, some nice, some not so nice. He also makes friends with a couple of humans.

Pixar did something interesting in this movie. They inserted live-action acting into a cartoon. It was a huge deal a while back when the opposite happened. Think back to "Mary Poppins" or "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", where cartoons were added to a live-action film.

The film started slowly and didn't do much to pick up speed. It felt like a very long version of the short films that usually proceed the features. The story didn't really hold our interest. There were a few laughs, but otherwise I shold have saved it for Netflix like I originally planned. My son seemed to like it a lot more than we did, which was the point of our going. Since he liked it, I will give it a little boost in my ranking. I say save it for a rental. It isn't worth a theater viewing.

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