Smooth Harold, The Blog of Blake Snow » animation http://www.smoothharold.com Husband, father, writer, and proprietor. Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:10:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Review: Pixar’s Wall-E is booooring. http://www.smoothharold.com/review-pixars-wall-e-is-booooring/ http://www.smoothharold.com/review-pixars-wall-e-is-booooring/#comments Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:56:52 +0000 Blake http://www.smoothharold.com/review-pixars-wall-e-is-booooring/ Wall-E is boring
Pixar’s Wall-E and Stanly Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey share a lot in common. Both are set in space, feature little dialog, have robots taking over the world, are immensely artistic, won’t keep a 2 and ½ year-old engaged despite their G rating, and offer a handful of sophisticated moments in filmmaking. But both are really monotonous — an analogy proving that Wall-E is easily Pixar’s worst film to date, for both adults and children alike.

I remained in the theater on Saturday only to see the ending, but the journey getting there is tedious and slow. There are some comical moments, particularly between starring robot Wall-E and his love interest, but the the movie’s underlying commentary on environmental issues is clumsy, pretentious, and undercooked at best. There’s just no story here to keep things interesting; no characters that you will really sympathize with.

I think even Pixar agrees with me. In a 2007 teaser trailer, director Andrew Stanton admitted that a handful of other Pixar films were made before Wall-E, which was prototyped in the summer of 1994 along with “a bunch of ideas” that became A Bug Life’s, Monster’s Inc, and Finding Nemo. If it took 14 years to produce Wall-E while better movies were being made, maybe it should have been skipped. So is Pixar short on compelling ideas?

In any case, skip this movie. Otherwise you’ll pray for 1:36 minutes of your life back.

]]> http://www.smoothharold.com/review-pixars-wall-e-is-booooring/feed/ 11 Top 10 computer animated movies http://www.smoothharold.com/top-10-computer-animated-movies/ http://www.smoothharold.com/top-10-computer-animated-movies/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:40:20 +0000 Blake http://www.smoothharold.com/top-10-computer-animated-movies/ Anton Ego
Though I widely disagree with DeadBolt’s Top 10 picks (Beowulf? You cannot be serious), the movie portal makes a strong case for most of their selections, with Pixar rightfully sweeping the top five slots. As for me, Ratatouille is easily the greatest computer animated film ever made, and one of the best feature films of all time — animated or otherwise.

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