I saw Wall-e yesterday, I’ve never been a fan of Pixar movies….none of them have really done anything special to my bones, which is understandable because they are primarily made for and appeal to kids. Well…kids, plus most of the female population, gay guys and the odd lemon to be more elaborate.
It has to be said that the Movie House on Belfast’s Dublin Road is never the best place to see a movie, especially on Screen 1 because they still haven’t cleaned off the stain where somebody threw a Coke at it about 8 years ago and there’s always some annoyingly loud drunk people who stumbled in from Wetherspoons, but looking past all that this movie is beautiful. It’s the first Blu-ray movie I shall buy when I get round to HD movie buying, it really is that good. Right from the start you also realise that this is a bit different than the Toy Stories and talking animals that we’ve come to expect, which is a blast of fresh air. The first half of the movie is pure artistic and sonic wonderland, the latter stages….not so much, but I guess you have to please everybody.
There’s a great sense of solitude and loneliness for a large part of the beginning, sure there’s the “fun” bits that you would expect, but they seem more like light relief than crowd pleasing moments. A surprising lack of dialogue is refreshing and the fact that the cockroach character is modelled on an ACTUAL cockroach, which cannot talk but yet you can’t help but feel some sort of empathy for, is a real lesson in characterisation. He/she/it makes you glad that CG sidekicks don’t always have to be the most annoying thing on the fucking planet.
So yes, without spoiling too much it’s damn good. There’s lots of forward thinking (world of fat people) humour in it and talking robots with cool sounding voices. Every time Eve spoke it reminded me of Portal, which can only be a good thing because I loved that game.
Chris