ThreeGeek vs. The Pink Robots

Richard:
I sat here trying to type up the opening sentence of this review for about 10 minutes, but all I can open with is, "See 'Wall-E.'" It's funny, touching, thrilling entertainment -- and it starts with the Disney logo.

I know; crazy isn't it?

It's been years since I saw the Disney logo flash onto the big screen and actually cared. It took Pixar to change all that.

I will leave the plot synopsis to Sherman, he's better with those anyway. What I want to talk about are the risks Pixar took to make such a wonderful film. First off, this is not a kid's movie. Don't get me wrong, it's appropriate for children of all ages -- and they will enjoy it, but there has to be some life-experience under your belt if you want the full effect.

For the first part of the movie, Wall-E (Ben Burtt) is alone on the cold, desolate shell of what was once Earth. There is no one, save the cockroach he keeps as a pet. Not some singing, Jiminy Cricket insect, just a regular, little cockroach that follows him around.

This brings me to the next risk: silence.

See, if there's no one to talk to, then there's no dialogue. When used well, this is a powerful choice, but executed poorly, it can ruin a movie. For example: depending on who you talk to you talk to, the movie "Cast Away" did both. I think it was brilliant, but who am I to argue with the masses?

Oh yeah... a critic. So, shut up. You're wrong.

And this movie nailed it.

(Editor's Note: The end portion of this review has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The draft used above was found near a 6 foot square of scorched earth, littered with machine oil and cigarette butts. I have used the extensive computer banks in my shadowed headquarters to extract a plausible score from the recovered notations -- if Richard is ever found, I hope it will conform to his wishes. --T)

(Editor's Note, Part II: Oh, wait... here it is. --T)

Ahem... as I was saying before the "break": This movie is great. I love it, you will too. Everyone will. If they don't, I think they might be evil robot commies from Hell.

This review was hard for me, I rewrote it 5 or 6 times before Thad finally forced me to just go with it. I urge you: see this wonderful film. I know I'm having troubles describing it... that 's because you can't, you just have to experience it.

5 out of 5



Jeremiah:
It's not often that this particular reviewer walks into a movie with high expectations and ends up with those expectations not only met, but, in a way, transcended.

There have have been many great movies this year -- hell, this summer. Well, there's a new five-star film out there and it comes in the guise of a children's movie, starring an unassuming robot. Pixar's “Wall-E” is one of the best films of the year so far and, in this reviewer's opinion, the best Pixar movie, bar-none.

It's rare that a children's movie is filled with such love and intelligence that it practically envelopes the entire audience in a warm embrace of sorts. The first forty-five minutes are virtually free of dialogue, and yet there is not a single moment where we are left wondering what Wall-E is thinking or feeling. Pixar has once again shown that they are more than mere animators; they are film-makers, as well. The first segment shows an understanding and love of storytelling that will leave you in awe.

For those who may not already know, Wall-E is a robot. The last one on Earth. His job is clean up the mess left by the human race. Apparently, we got so good at consuming consumer goods that we started to run out of ways to dispose of our garbage. So instead of cleaning it up, we shot ourselves into space for five years and waited for the planet to become inhabitable again. But the five years soon evolved into 700 years.

Wall-E has been dutifully carrying on his job all this time -- his only friend, a cockroach. As he goes about his job, he collects odds and ends, such as cassette tapes, spare parts from other robots for self repair and lights to decorate his home. Wall-E, it seems, has a soul -- or as close as a robot can get to having a soul. He builds skyscrapers out of the trash he compacts. He seems to be adding on to the city, while he works. In other words, Wall-E seems to be doing what we as race failed to do: find a use for the garbage.

Then along comes Eve (Elissa Knight), a robot sent by the Axiom, the vessel containing the last of our race, to see if life is sustainable. She is in search of plant life. She finds Wall-E. What follows is one of the sweetest courtships in recent history. Especially when Wall-E presents Eve with a plant he found. Upon her acceptance of the plant she immediately goes into a coma-like state and awaits the return for her survey ship. Wall-E, never giving up, cares for her in her hibernation state and follows her home when the Axiom returns for her.

I will leave the rest for you to discover on your own. Suffice to say, I have never felt so deeply for non-human characters in my life. There were times, a whole stretch of the movie in fact (well, damn it... most of the movie), where I had tears in my eyes. I wasn't crying, by I watered up consistently, to the point where there was a danger of genuine emotion escaping.

I know, I was scared too.

Writer/director Andrew Stanton has done a superb job at crafting what is quite possibly one of the best children's movie ever made. The fact the many children may not enjoy it as much as the adults may prove this reviewer's fear about the next generation to be sadly accurate.

Some of you may find this review too positive. You may think this reviewer guilty of drinking the kool-aid. It may appear that I am just another among many, faceless masses gushing about the latest Pixar movie as though they can do no wrong. Whatever you may think of my efforts, or however they may appear, they are one thing if nothing else: honest.

So is "Wall-E," and it's a masterpiece to boot. That's an achievement in it's own right.


/ 5


Yours Until Hell Freezes Over,

Jeremiah




Thaddeus:
I'm afraid my proclivity toward hating robots, as well as the need to spend time with my girlfriend, prevented me from seeing this flick.

I was gonna draw you a picture, but I got extra hours at work.

I do the editing too, so technically I'm everywhere already.
OOoOOoOOOoooOOOooo!

-Thad out

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Force the Sherman I: A "Stitch" in Disney

You may or may not have read my last essay, in which I bemoaned the moral downfall of a certain multi-million dollar merchandising machine/animation studio. It's right below this on the main page, if you want to catch up. I can wait...

Anyway, I figured I should start off the marathon with a contradiction to everything I said: Disney's 2002 animated feature, “Lilo and Stitch.”

“Lilo and Stitch” may well be one of the best modern Disney films, and it success lies in their very antithesis. Instead of labored and monotonous songs, you have musical montages set to the songs of Elvis Presley himself. The absence of a major archetypal villain, another Disney staple, is filled by several bad-intentioned characters who, in the end, band together against a greater foe.

Stitch (co-writer and directer, Chris Sanders) or Experiment 626 was genetically designed to cause destruction and mayhem. His creator, Dr. Joomba Jookiba (David Ogden Stiers) -- or, as he prefers to be called, “Evil Genius” -- created him with the intent of global domination. As the movie opens, we see Joomba on trial before a sort of Galactic High Council. The evil doctor is sentenced to life imprisonment. Stitch, being deemed an abomination, is sentenced to exile on a desolate rock. It goes without saying that Stitch escapes from his jailers, steals an escape pod and crash lands on Earth -- one of the Hawaiian islands to be exact -- but I went ahead and said it anyway.

There, we meet sisters Lilo (Daveigh Chase) and Nani (Tia Carrere). Nani is trying her best to keep a job and raise Lilo, but Lilo is proving to be difficult. Her abundant imagination makes her a social leper, and when she tries to be nice, she is teased. Their parents being absent is another contrary-to-modern-Disney trait. Lilo and Nani are on their own, and, while they love each other, they fight a lot. At times Lilo will even lock Nani outside the house. The relationship of the sisters smacks of a realism that's refreshing to see in a children's movie.

A social worker has been assigned to Nani and Lilo, a hulking, mountain of a man Mr. Bubbles (Ving Rhames, who else?). Dr. Joomba, meanwhile, has been released and employed by the High Council to hunt down 626. He is aided by Agent Pleakley (Kevin McDonald), an expert on the endangered species of mosquitoes on the Galactic Preservation known as Earth. Stitch has been run over by an entire trucking convoy and wakes up in a pound... and the movie has not even really gotten started yet.

Lilo adopts Stitch, against everyone's best wishes. Stitch, discovering that his creator has been sent to destroy him, uses Lilo as a shield. Along the way, they start to form an unlikely friendship. Joomba even muses on a philosophical quandary in relation to Stitch. He was created to destroy, with biological markers to gravitate towards thriving metropolises and large business areas, to kill and destroy... yet he lands on a peaceful rural tropical island. He has become a creature without purpose and must cope.

The rest of the movie deals with all these relationships, emotional revelations and attempted assassinations of Stitch, climaxing with space craft chases and exploding volcanoes. All with Island music and Elvis playing behind it. It's a really weird Disney movie. Even the way their drawn, Lilo and Nani are not beautiful Princess. They are chubby in places, Lilo having a rolly-polly shape and Nani having thick thighs... y'know, like real people.

Stitch is a genetic abomination, repeatedly called “unclean” by those hunting him. But even Joomba and Pleakley eventually help Stitch fight what amounts to the movie's overall villain: an Intergalactic Policeman, prejudiced against genetic mutations perhaps, but still not unabashedly evil.

All in all, “Lilo and Stitch” is a surprising masterpiece of sorts. If the movie does have flaws, they're forgivable. The sheer imagination of the plot wins with me. This is the Disney I remember and love.

/ 5

Yours Until Hell Freezes Over,

Jeremiah

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Force the Sherman I: The Inception

Earlier this month I posted a blog asking you, the readers, to choose a genre, actor, director or any other manner of film-grouping for me to focus on in the month of June, giving you the rare opportunity to control what I reviewed, to hold the very reins of my movie-watching fate!

Well, the masses have spoken. And by masses, I mean the one person who responded. Victoria Easley of Rolla, Missouri wrote in and suggested films that are animated.

So, June shall be the Month of Animation!

I'll be reviewing the gamut of animated films: foreign, computer animated and old-school hand-drawings for the kids and adults alike.

Animation is the one style of film-making where the imagination is truly free to run rampant without the oppressive fists of the laws of physics and budget constraints in regards to special effects. Or the worry how the effects might look, be it too cheesy and fake or the risk that they may be dated in a few years time. With animation, the sky is the limit. This is why most animated films fall in the realm of fantasy and science fiction.

Yet with all this, there is something almost eerie in how accessible the characters are. The plots are often so outlandish that we just accept them without question. Many of the people I've spoken with have confessed that the most terrifying images from their childhood were that of animated films. Be it the wicked witch from ,“Sleeping Beauty,” the evil Queen from “Snow White,” or the mother's death in “Bambi.”

I cited all Disney films because, until the last few years, the name Disney was -- and in some cases, still is -- synonymous with animation. Early Disney had the uncanny ability to entertain children without talking down to them. They were not afraid to expose children to the roller coaster of emotions in life. In a way, they were entertaining children with one hand, placating them, while, with the other, they were getting them ready for the real world. There are people who do purposeful harm to others, some children do loose their mothers and jealousy can drive people to acts of madness. All while peppering in a nice little song here and there.

The latter is what caused the downfall of Disney, in a way. It got to a point where the songs were redundant, monotonous and only there because every Disney movie, by some unwritten (or at least unpublished) law, had to have at least three songs. Children, while often naive, are not stupid. They can tell, even if only it's subconsciously, when a song is there as filler and has no purpose for the mood or story.

Think I'm wrong? Show a child a newer Disney movie, followed by a classic, and see which one they enjoy more. See which one moves them, which one enraptures them the most.

I guess one could say the downfall of Disney would be their loss of faith in the children's intelligence. Of course there will be those who argue that Disney's business is booming, bigger than ever, and that their children don't seem to notice. You mean quite possibly one of the most ignorant and illiterate generations we've seen in a while? Of course the children are not going to notice a difference! No one exposes them to the old-school stuff!

Another argument one might use would be that the glorious second coming of animation is Pixar. Well, I'm sorry to say that, if that's your argument, you're an idiot. Oh don't get me wrong, Pixar is glorious. They have ushered in a new era of children's animation. However, Disney has nothing to do with those, except to distribute them. Animation-wise, story-wise, director-wise and song-wise (or the lack thereof) is all Pixar. In fact, most of Pixar's inspiration comes from Japanese animators such as Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata ("Princess Mononoke" and "Grave of the Fireflies," respectively).

I realize now that my essay on the glories of animation has turned into a rant about the downfall of Disney. When one starts to bitch about how a mighty business conglomerate has fallen, it's time to call it a wrap. So, in conclusion, this month will be full of nostalgia and discovery -- as much for you, I hope, as for me.

I'll be attempting to post two or three times a week, so check in periodically and see me write myself ragged.

Here we go... this oughta' be a blast.

Yours Until Hell Freezes Over,

Jeremiah

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