Wall•E

I tend to get a lot of grief from people for being what they call, much to my chagrin, a "movie snob". They complain that I can nitpick any movie, and manage to find the flaws in anything, no matter how "brainless" and "fun" they find it. "You think too much about things," my wife likes to tell me.

But, the joy of being a "movie snob" and over-thinking things is that, when you stumble across a movie as wondrous and magical as WALL•E is, you get not only the joy of watching it, but the joy of analyzing and picking apart all the incredible details and bits that make it up.

I truly, truly loved WALL•E dearly. I genuinely think that it's the best picture Pixar has ever made, and it's easily the best film of the year so far. Admittedly, the competition isn't so hot yet...but at the same time, I don't know that much can compare to it.

And yet, I have a deep fear that WALL•E will fail, and fail badly, at the box office.

Why? Because this isn't a typical movie. Heck, it's not even a typical Pixar movie, and they're known for pushing the boundaries. WALL•E is basically a beautiful silent art film masquerading as family entertainment. There's almost no dialogue at all in the film, and what dialogue there is doesn't really start until almost an hour into the film. The movie has a lot of things that happen, but there's not a huge plot; there are incidents, and events, but there's a nice lack of forceful plot to it all. And there's a nasty little cynical side to the movie, a gleeful skewering of our society and some of our trends, and it's not necessarily subtle. It touches, in some ways, on some of the same ideas as the cult favorite Idiocracy did; while it's not as pessimistic as that film, there's definitely some deep cynicism here, buoyed though it may be with some hope.

Now, if you take the film on its own terms, it works, and it succeeds beautifully. In fact, it succeeds because of all those things, because of its desire to be different and unique. But will it be appreciated by a lot of people who want something more actiony and light-hearted? Maybe not...but I can hope.

But enough of how the film will do. Let's talk about what it does.

WALL•E is stunning, beautiful art. Pixar has always been known for their amazing visual work, but their work here surpasses anything they've done before, bringing an incredible beauty and majesty to the screen, but also filling it with emotional depth and power. The film's lack of dialogue helps here, allowing the viewer to simply take in the screen. There's a journey through space that stunned me (part of which is seen below, but it's hard to truly appreciate it without seeing it on the big screen), but the sequence that moved me deeply was nothing more than a dance of sorts. It's hard to explain without seeing it, but someone I read simply said it this way: "It sure seemed like the room got dusty during that part, because a lot of people started sniffling and tearing up a bit." It's a beautiful sequence, and one of the most romantic scenes I've had the joy of seeing in a film.

At its core, that's what WALL•E is: a love story. The fact that it's a better, more genuine, and more moving love story than I've seen in theaters in some time is not only a testament to how terrible most romantic comedies are, but how incredible WALL•E is. When's the last time you could really find yourself emotionally involved with a small hunk of metal?

And yet, you are. The Pixar animators do a spectacular job on WALL•E himself, giving him life, personality, and even a strong character without a single word of dialogue. It's an incredible character design, and it's a testament to their abilities that you walk out with deep affectionate feelings for something no more technically alive than this computer I'm working on now.

But, as with all Pixar movies, it's not just the characters and the visuals; it's the world they create, and the world of WALL•E is unlike anything I've seen before. It's like some marvelous blend of the bleakly funny social critique of Brazil combined with the sensibility and visual sensation of Apple (unsurprising, given Steve Jobs' position as head of Pixar), and the result is a world you can get lost in. One of the things that makes WALL•E so wonderful is the way that it's willing to take time to play with this world, to explore it and let it live in the details. Rarely has a world been more defined, for example, than with some lines we see, and it's marvelous to watch the way those lines mutate and evolve over the course of the film.

In the end, it's those sort of small touches that make WALL•E so magical. The touch of two hands here; the swirl of ice crystals there; the cowering leap of a little robot in the other place. Without so much as a single word of dialogue, WALL•E creates a horde of robots who all have their own personalities, their own lives, and define them more sharply than human characters in all too many movies today.

Words truly can't do justice to how much I loved this movie. From the opening beautiful sweeping camera work (and, yes, I do mean camera work; Pixar worked with famed Coen brothers cinematographer Roger Deakins to create a genuine camera look to the film, one that still stuns) to the incredible ending credits (which alone are still better than anything else this year, culminating in a beautiful final image before the second part of the credits roll), WALL•E is a fiercely original, funny, charming, beautiful movie. It's the kind of movie that makes me love going to the movies. For an hour and a half, I was in this wondrous, incredible world, one filled with beauty, grace, humor, and true emotional power. I hated for it to end, and I really want to see it again just to take it all in again.