Pixar's latest film, WALL-E, fits very expectedly within its oeuvre. Entertaining, but predictable. Fun, but simple. It follows a very sad-looking robot as the last inhabitant on earth, save for a resilient bug he befriends, who continues his futile job of waste management. (I firmly believe that Pixar has now successfully anthropomorphized every single possible object in the world.) His meager existence is supplanted by scavenging old movies and lost artifacts such as iPods and Rubik's Cubes. When a sleek, sexy robot lands on Earth in search of plant life, WALL-E finds true love. Or at least someone whose hand he hopes to hold. When they return to a space station together, a new plot emerges involving mutinies and fat people!
The animation and sound design in this film are phenomenal. Absolutely astonishing. There was very little acting due in no small part to the very little dialogue. Even without those aspects, the characters were rich and charming. An impressive feat. After the first 30 minutes or so, which I found a bit boring (imagine a 30 minute version of the trailer), I was really hooked. The humor began to pick up pace and I found myself drawn into their vision of the future (think Idiocracy meets I, Robot). The creative little quirks of the robots, people, and ship reminded me of the ingenuity and magic in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen. You feel yourself in a fully-realized world with its own set of rules. One thing I did not like about the movie was the inclusion of live action; it made it that much more obvious that we were watching CGI and that this was not real.
A bit of a rant: I just wish Pixar would take some risks now and again. I wish they would surprise me for once. They succeed at what they set out to do admirably well, but they don't aim their sights high enough. They spend time replicating lens flares and rack focuses instead of taking advantage of the fact that this movie was NOT shot with a camera. They have the resources and intelligence to give us something truly revolutionary, something we have never ever even dreamed of seeing, but instead they rehash movie tropes and sprinkle a little fairy dust on top and hope we don't notice that we've seen this all before, albeit in an uglier or rougher form.Another note: The short film in the beginning of this movie, Presto, is amazing. Highly recommended.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/