Wall-E
Pixar does SPACE!
Let's face it, that would have been enough for me: gorgeous spaceships, stunning panoramas of galaxies and lots and lots of robots.
Yet they give us more: an abandoned Earth, a city full of rubbish that is wonderfully apocalyptic and dead.
The textures and animation are quite stunning. The Earth looks real. Really real.
But it's Pixar, so of course they give us even more: a fantastic story and amazing characters. Wall-E is so expressive, and so lovely and funny. And then there are the Science Fiction nods: the 2001 music, the crazy ship's computer, the robot and spaceship design.
Genius.
I loved it.
What might be more interesting however is whether the kids loved it. I saw Wall-E in a cinema full of kids. For the first half an hour; when there's not much talking, just lovely visuals and witty slapstick and (shock!) character development; the kids were noisy, talking about sweets mainly. When the action picked up they quietened down a bit. It mainly seemed to be the adults that were laughing. (I laughed an awful lot.) Behind me some annoying kids kept asking what was happening, perhaps they were stupid? Perhaps parents don't teach their kids how to watch films these days? Then near the end, at a sad bit, a kid behind burst into tears, sobbing that Wall-E was hurt. As adults we know that a Pixar film will have a happy ending, but this child didn't know the rules and was very upset. Meanwhile, the adults just laughed.
So, my unscientific analysis suggests that Wall-E is more fun for adults than kids. But all that will change once they've watched it for the hundredth time on DVD.
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