MovieWatch: "Wall*E"

"Wall-E"
Director: Andrew Stanton
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 79
In a Nutshell: [After nearly six months of general cinematic disappointment and forcing myself out to see stuff like "Jumper" and "The Happening" just to keep my muscles flexing, I've had a couple really good days for movies. "The Pineapple Express," which I saw on Wednesday, is my favorite comedy of the year to date. And "The Dark Knight" is my favorite film overall. So what did that mean for my impressions of "Wall*E"?]

Two quick reactions from "Wall*E" that I wanna share.

#1: The closing credits -- an AWESOME survey of the history of art -- begin rolling and a kid next to me, probably three or four looks at his parents and says, "That was too long!"

#2: A group of college-ish kids are just gabbing up a storm about how they liked the movie and they're swapping the various visual references they caught -- "Blade Runner," "2001," "Toy Story" -- and how much they liked it. One finally says, "Yeah, but it was slow at the beginning and then it picked up." And his friends agreed.

I'm not necessarily sure I have commentary on either of those reactions. Or if I want to commit to either POV. Nor do I know how typical they're going to be. At 103 minutes, "Wall*E" isn't really a long movie by Pixar standards, but I'm not in any position to explain to a pre-schooler that 103 minutes isn't too long. Nor did I want to sit down and explain to the college students that the first 45 minutes of "Wall*E" were probably the most purely and magically cinematic I've seen at the movies in several years and that when "the pace picks up," that's when the movie becomes bland and conventional, to my mind.

More thoughts after the bump...

Click through...

For 45 minutes, without an iota of dialogue -- barring an obtrusive, expositional training video featuring a live-action Fred Willard, I mean -- "Wall*E" is a perfect silent movie. Our hero is an expressive walking trash compactor who -- like Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity -- far outlived his expected shelf life. Accompanied only by a disturbingly cute cockroach, he scuttles amidst the detritus of a human modernity, ineffectually cleaning up the mess the vacated people left of the planet. The Pixar team -- led by director Andrew Stanton -- give Wall*E an entirely original Earth to play around in, one that doesn't mimic any sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland cinema has previously offered. The key of "Wall*E" is that it isn't post-apocalyptic at all. When Earth ceased to be inhabitable, humanity made a half-hearted attempt to clean things up, but mostly abandoned the planet to cleaner-bots.

The real star is Ben Burtt, a legend of sound design. Not only does he sort of give Wall*E his limited voice, but the robot's every move is emotive and the landscape is aurally alive around him. Accompanied by the character's equally expressive eyes and limbs, it's no wonder that by the time Eve, an exploratory probe sent from humanity's interstellar outpost, arrives, audiences are in love with the main character. From there, we're even rooting for him to romance, even though part of us recognizes that what we're rooting for is for Number Five from "Short Circuit" to have sex with a flying iPod.

One of the essential tropes of silent comedy is a wonderment with new technology. In the works of Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd, plots were frequently generated by the new gizmo of the moment, be it the car, the automated assembly line or, in several cases, the movie camera. Decades later, Jacques Tati would mine similar territory, as the writer-director-star's mostly wordless main characters would engage with the modern world as if it were something entirely unfamiliar. So many of those vintage silent or near-silent films can be boiled down to the theme: In a new world, there's always room for an old-fashioned man, while certain virtues -- that'd be "love," mostly -- never go out of style.

I really dig the alternative spin that "Wall*E" puts on that formula. Our hero lives in a bizarre world where it's been the technological present for nearly 700 years, where no advancements have been made at all, because nobody's been around to make them. With that stagnation in place, Wall*E's fascination isn't with the technology of the 21st or 22nd Century, whatever the peak of human engineering happened to be. He's nostalgic for a time before he existed. He looks at his peers as spare parts for when he has a malfunction, but he marvels at older equipment. If a Lloyd or Chaplin would find himself done in by something sleek and new, Wall*E is flummoxed by sporks and Rubix Cubes. He listens to old music and classical musicals and when he watches "Hello Dolly!" it's on a VHS cassette. Wall*E isn't exactly a Luddite, but he has a retro-appreciation. And he -- like Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton -- is a romantic.

I think it all has to do with two different versions of filmic storytelling separated by 80 or 90 years and conveying a similar message: The silent film greats used the developing medium of cinema to say, "Look, no matter how advanced things get, the core virtues of storytelling and romance aren't suddenly going to change." It's a view of the world that's both progressive and yet conservative. The Pixar ethos has always been the same. It says, "Yes, we're using computers and we're making animation look more and more like real life, but don't be freaked out! We aren't abandoning character and heart in the process."

That may be the most intelligent thing I have to say about the movie, so you may wanna quit now.

Anyway, on Earth "Wall*E" has a charm and a sweetness that's entirely irresistible. Up in space, on the massive Axiom spaceship, "Wall*E" loses some of its charm. Suddenly, "Wall*E" is often a supporting character in his own story, as the Pixar team can't resist the need to introduce humans and conversation into the story. The people, having been raised for many generations in zero-gravity, are fat blobs who travel on hover-chairs and eschew their actual surroundings for virtual reality.

It took me a bit of thought to figure out why the human segment of "Wall*E" doesn't work narratively and here's the best I can come up with: Wall*E is the hero of the story. He's our hero. He's EVE's hero. He's the hero to the motley "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" gang of malfunctioning robots he accidentally rescues. But the humans on the Axiom don't recognize that he's *their* hero. And, in reality, he isn't. Eve has a directive. Wall*E will do anything to help Eve. But Eve doesn't care about the people on the ship. So Wall*E doesn't care about the people on the ship. So why should *we* care about the people on the ship. What's the opposite of collateral damage? Where simply by virtue of being near something positive, uninvolved civilians benefit? Collateral Improvement? That's what the people on the Axiom get. They get a savior they didn't ask for and didn't want and a savior who doesn't have any interest in saving them.

As I think about it, Wall*E's lack of interest in the humans is interesting. As I said before, he loves him some "Hello Dolly!" but when he gets aboard the axiom, he makes no connection between the floating tubs of jelly he meets and the dancing, singing stars of his favorite movie. Why doesn't he? Why does the story not refocus around Wall*E helping humanity rediscover its musical energy? I wonder.

The political message in "Wall*E" is simultaneously laid on thick and unconvincing. Yes, it's about rolling up your sleeves and doing your part to clean up the world, but is it REALLY? Wall*E cleans up the world because that's what he's programmed to do and he picked up the green seedling because it's something different that he's never seen before. It's both simple and primal and it has nothing to do with what's right or wrong, ethically, so I highly doubt that children are going to come away having gotten that as a message. And there's absolutely zero chance that they will internalize the message about rampant consumerism and waste. As they put on their Wall*E shirts and eat their Wall*E snacks from their Wall*E lunchboxes, what are the odds that they'll pick up on a message about how it's wrong to bow to every trend pushed on you by marketers? I'm much more certain that "Ratatouille" will spawn a generation of wee foodies than that "Wall*E" is going to yield millions of little independent-minded Green Party voters.

My complaints about "Wall*E" are quibbles. They're the reason I only really, really liked it, rather than necessarily loving it. "Wall*E" does nothing to tarnish the Pixar image, nor to make one wonder what it is that Pixar is doing that no other animation company seems to understand. And it isn't just the storytelling, which has always been Pixar's trump card. Surely by this point some other company should have poached enough Pixar animators or hired enough art school hot shots to catch up on an artistic level, but "Wall*E" is in a different aesthetic league from "Kung Fu Panda," for example. And it's not a small gulf.

On to the next movie!

[Finally, as I like to say, if you haven't read "Uncharted," go do that!!!!]

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MovieWatch: "Enchanted"

"Enchanted"
Director: Kevin Lima
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 58
In a Nutshell: [Favorite Overheard Conversation while sitting in the theater waiting for "Enchanted" to begin: Two college-aged girls sitting behind me lamenting the absence of good romantic comedies. One, obviously the more intelligent, said that the best she'd seen this year was "Once" (I won't get into whether or not that was a comedy). The friend hadn't heard of "Once," but without skipping a beat she declared, "I wanted to see 'Love in the Time of Cholera,' but I really wish they'd given it a different name. It sounds so depressing!" I don't wanna make it sound like I'm mocking that bubble-headed girl. To date, "Love in the Time of Cholera" has made less than $3.5 million domestically and could not possibly have done any worse if it had been retitled "Love in the Time of Cotton Candy and Carnations."]

Anywho... "Enchanted."

I haven't even started my review and I've already knocked points off my overall rating three times.

The message is simple: If "I'm Not There" is a movie that invites you to think about it and mull its thematic and stylistic choices (not necessarily to its advantage), "Enchanted" is a movie where you should bop yourself over the head with a frying pan three times after seeing it. That way you can remember the mush-headed love story and hopefully Amy Adams' performance and avoid anything else. I'm not being completely fair. "Enchanted" is a movie that was made for children and my only quibble is with one or two reviewers causing me to believe it might be fun for all ages.

I understand that my problem here is my lack of whimsy, though I defy anybody who's watched me get misty-eyed watching "Babe" to make such a claim.

Additional grumpy thoughts after the bump.

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[You're gonna get spoilers here. They're intuitive spoilers -- I mean, Amy Adams' possible love interests are played by James Marsden and McDreamy -- but spoilers none-the-less.]

Anybody wanna feel old? "Pretty Woman" came out more than 17 years ago.

That movie is, of course, about a young woman who begins in the real world -- or as real as any world in which hookers look like Julia Roberts -- and is thrust into a magical world, in which everything she sees fills her with the exact same wide-eyed amazement. In the end, she says "I want the fairy tale!" and that's exactly what she gets.

Since that time, there have been three or four major pop culture references -- most prominently in "She's All That" to to romances as swoony as "Pretty Woman" except for that hooking thing.

I'm not sure if I've seen any critics talking about how "Enchanted" is a reversal of "Pretty Woman," with both working on a similar "Cinderella" structure.

"Enchanted" is about a young woman who begins in a fairly tale world -- or at least some absurd world in which Disney can still make money off of traditional animation -- and is thrust into the gritty real world (or actual Manhattan looking so sterilized that it might as well have been a studio set), in which everything she sees fills her with the exact same wide-eyed amazement.

It's no surprise that if whoredom was something every young girl should be rescued from in "Pretty Woman," imagination, idealism and magic are the things every young girl should be rescued from in "Enchanted." Yes, it's good to maintain a certain amount of romanticism, but not at the expense of the hard and cold facts of life.

In that respect, I'm not sure if "Enchanted" is more of a chick flick aimed at 11-year-old girls, or a cautionary tale aimed at 30-year-old women. Given the nefarious way that Disney flicks so often work, it could be both. Embrace the fairy tale! Give up the fairy tale! Your prince is out there! Sometimes your prince might be a bitter lawyer with a kid! Mixed messages, baby.

If Bill Kelly's gentle, inoffensive script is all over the place thematically, Kevin Lima's direction keeps the movie grounded in all the wrong ways. It's one thing to attempt to draw a contrast between the pastel-y land of Andalasia and the realities of post- Giuliani New York (scary, but in a commercially viable sort of way, rather than the way it used to be), but Disney is too invested in New York City for it to be depicted as truly threatening. So it's neither magical nor ultra-real. It's just flat. Lima directed the underrated animated "Tarzan" and came out of animation, but nothing on his live action resume -- including "102 Dalmatians" and two "Eloise" telefilms -- suggests he understands the pacing or composition of reality, much less bring an animated sensibility to the table.

In the real world, "Enchanted" too often strolls along, like it's in a tight corset, or an unwieldy hoop skirt. The pacing perks up only in several musical numbers, a very funny cleaning song with roaches and rats and a somewhat less entertaining romantic ballad in Central Park.

Amy Adams is remarkable, but it isn't at all difficult to think of performances that are similar. Beyond Roberts in "Pretty Woman," you could look to Tom Hanks in "Big" or Daryl Hannah in "Splash" or even Jennifer Garner in "13 Going on 30." "Enchanted" is a better movie than "13 Going on 30," but it's worse than "Big" or "Splash."

Actually, let's give her even more credit. "Enchanted" is her movie completely. She sings (perfectly), dances (convincingly) and she cooks and cleans. Playing everything at a heightened level, she conveys both broad comedy and true sadness. Some people will know that this is just an extension of her Oscar nominated "Junebug" performance, but not many.

Of course, "Enchanted" was a script that couldn't have been made without Adams and part of the reason for that is that certainly no A-list male star would take on either of the two main characters. As Prince Charming, James Marsden gets to have fun, at least. His character is the same as Adams' in the beginning, only he doesn't get to go through any transformation. Patrick Dempsey's character, though, is just a miserable pill and nothing in either the writing or Dempsey's interpretation gives any justification for why it might be a good thing to make this man happy.

I dislike any romantic comedy which forces me to root for the leading lady to ditch both of her hunky options and run off with a chipmunk.

That feels like a good place to stop, especially since I have to recap "The Amazing Race" for Zap2it, plus watch the latest Patriots demolition. However, I have one last question, but it's a little more spoilery, so don't bother reading if you haven't seen the movie.

[You've been warned... One thing that annoyed me more than anything about the film's mixed message was the near-climactic shopping spree/montage. Adams' Giselle has established herself as a woman table of turning any available fabric into a gown that, as the very end of the movie tells us, puts most designers to shame. Why, then, in order to become a REAL WORLD princess, must she pile up thousands in credit card debt for a makeover that turned her into a lovely, but much less unique, beauty? I understand that in "Pretty Woman," Julia Roberts had to go out shopping on Richard Gere's dime to replace her whore clothes, but that was because she couldn't sew or talk to vermin.]

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MovieWatch: "The Simpsons Movie"

"The Simpsons Movie"
Director: David Silverman
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 59
In a Nutshell: The opposite of "Harry Potter 5," really. I had low expectations for "The Simpsons Movie" after the early trailers and buzz, but then people started saying, "It's not great, but it's as good as we could have hoped for," so that raised my hopes. Sure, that probably shouldn't have boosted my hopes *that* much, but I came away marginally disappointed. Not hugely disappointed. But marginally.

Then again? How disappointed could I possibly have been in a movie that brought me Spider-Pig. Like all of the very finest "Simpsons" gags ("I hate every ape I see/ From chimpan-A to chimpan-Z"), the "Spider-Pig" theme makes me giggle every time I sing it to myself. Of course, I knew the Spider-Pig song going in and I don't know if the movie gave me anything more memorable.

Additional thoughts after the bump...

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"The Simpsons Movie" took many of the right approaches to bringing the series -- which I still watch religiously every Sunday night -- to the big screen. Unlike the "Family Guy" direct-to-DVD movie, it wasn't just three episodes stapled together, sutures visible at all times. Instead, it was a 22 minute episode that was fleshed out and expanded to 80-plus minutes, only showing occasional signs of bloating. The Homer causes Springfield to get deemed an environmental disaster and stuck under a dome could have been covered in the standard episode length, so they padded it with a trip to Alaska, Bart's brief desire to be adopted by the Flanderses, Lisa's crush on a randomly introduced Irish boy and Grandpa's random gifts as a soothsayer. Oh and they added Spider-Pig, who set the plot in motion, but vanished entirely from the second half (at Comic-Con, Matt Selman [Penn alum!!!] said that off-screen, Spider-Pig was killed by Dr. Octo-Pig or Dr. Pig-to-Pus...). So, unlike the "South Park" movie, "The Simpsons Movie" felt padded and, honestly, slow and bloated in places.

First complaint: How do you have a "Simpsons Movie" without a coach gag? Even a built-in couch gag within the film some place?

Second complaint: Not quite enough brains. At its very best, "The Simpsons" throws cultural references around like mad and despite how semi-timely many of the pop culture nods end up feeling (impressive given the long lead time for episodes), they're almost never dated with the repeats come along. I think an effort was made to down-play pop culture and politics and anything contemporary in the movie, perhaps to aid its shelf-life and perhaps to aid play in foreign markets. Regardless, I didn't feel like there was enough intelligence. Plus, despite the extra large screen and room for additional details, I didn't get the sense that the movie was as chock-full of visual references and in-jokes as I might have liked. I appreciated the various self-referential "We're a movie based on a FOX TV show" moments, but I may have wanted more of that.

Third complaint: Sure, I love The Simpson family. But we got less of the supporting cast that you might in a standard 22 minute episode. Give me more Lenny and Carl. Give me more Mr. Burns. Give me more Chief Wiggum and Ralph Wiggum. Give me more of Dr. Nick and Gil and Apu and Bumblebee Man and Krusty and Kang & Kodos and Mr. Teeny. How is it that Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel had a bigger part than so many of those favorite characters?

Fourth complaint: This is just me, but if I were the members of "The Simpsons" team, I'd have tried to find a way to pay tribute to Phil Hartman in the movie somewhere, even if that just meant a Lionel Hutz reference or a Troy McLure movie playing at the Aztec. I'm sure there are several other folks from the "Simpsons" voice roster who have passed on (including guest voices like George Plimpton ["And a hotplate!"]) who might have warranted salutes, but Hartman kind of deserved one.

I laughed and chuckled, but probably less hard than I laugh at a good episode of the show, especially on a per-minute basis.

So it wasn't awful. And perhaps if I hadn't waited over a month to see it, I would have felt less build-up. But I wanted a wee bit more.

Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig/ Does whatever a Spider-Pig does/ Can he swing/ From a web/ No he can't/ He's a pig.

Tomorrow? "The Bourne Ultimatum."

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MovieWatch: "Ratatouille"

"Ratatouille"
Director: Brad Bird
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 74
In a Nutshell: The sense that Pixar was infallible, incapable of producing anything less than a great movie, was taken out to the woodshed by last summer's "Cars." I'm still a wee bit confused by "Cars," seeing as how it was directed by John Lasseter, Pixar's acknowledged mastermind. In the moment, "Cars" was merely disappointing. A year later, I'm hard-pressed to remember a single character, a single line of dialogue, a single moment. That's the kind of disposable entertainment I expect and accept from the animation departments at Sony or DreamWorks. Marketed to the NASCAR Nation, "Cars" was a huge hit. In fact, I have a hard time imagining "Ratatouille" out-grossing "Cars," though I write that with resignation, since "Ratatouille" is a fine bounce-back film for the company.

Follow through after the bump for the rest of my thoughts on both "Ratatouille" and Gary Rydrom's "Lifted," the attached Pixar short...

Click through...

Although much has been made of the difficulties of marketing a movie in which the main character is a rat and the title is unspellable (by me at least) and unpronounceable (by stupid people at least) and the setting is French (who we apparently still hate), "Ratatouille" is tapping the zeitgeist pretty well. The obnoxious man behind me who guffawed through the entire movie and his stupid wife who announced that she'd totally known that Brad Bird was the voice of semi-evil chef Skinner (Ian Holm is actually the voice) saw the poster for "No Reservations" as they left the theater and said, without irony, that the Aaron Eckhart/Catherine Zeta-Jones movie obviously must be trying to capitalize on "Ratatouille" (they seem not to have seen "Mostly Martha). They may have been wrong, but a good argument could be made that food is everywhere this summer and not just on the big screen. I'm recapping both "Top Chef" (actually about food) and "Hell's Kitchen" (actually about Gordon Ramsay swearing at people) for Zap2it and look at all of the news coverage that accompanied word that Kobayashi might duck Joey Chestnut in the annual 4th of July Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest (he's decided to fight through his jaw arthritis, last I heard). Food is everywhere and "Ratatouille" ought to be able to captitalize, even if the hero is, indeed, a bit of a rodent.

But Remy, anthropomorphized within an inch of his life, is a loveable rodent, a huggable rodent, a rodent who knows the proper sauces to accompany sweetbreads. And the film's message -- "Anybody can cook" -- isn't really about rats or even about cooking. Like so many animated films before it, "Ratatouille" argues that no matter how you look on the outside and no matter how people may judge you, your only limitations are the ones you put on yourself.

That's a good lesson for kids, but indeed "Ratatouille" may not be aimed at the smallest of viewers, or at least it lacks the elements that non-Pixar animated films seem to think children require. Unless I'm forgetting, there's no toilet humor at all and only occasional gags based on bodily fluids of any sort. There's amply physical humor, but I laughed more at the wordplay and kitchen hijinx. Other studios may think kids require Robin Williams doing standard ethnic caricatures, but Pixar doesn't.

There's a certain strangeness to some of the voice casting, weird bits of Pixar ideology. While DreamWorks and Sony have always had the impression that casting A-list actors to do voice-overs was a good creative and financial decision, Pixar has gone a different direction. Stand-up fans know Patton Oswalt, but he isn't bringing kids to the theater and he's a fine voice. Ian Holm [hilarious], Peter O'Toole [utterly remarkable] and Brian Dennehy have great voices, so you can't go wrong letting them work. But who thought it was a good idea to have Janeane Garofalo doing an off-putting and erratic French accent as leading lady Colette? Total non-actors (and animators) Lou Romano and Peter Sohn do fine with their key roles, but might Linguini and Emile have been funnier if Pixar had gone to a veteran voice artist? I'm not sure. I guess I prefer the Pixar casting method to whatever stuck me with "Madagascar."

"Ratatouille" looks phenomenal, doing magical things with both food and Paris.

The movie's too long and I kind with Bird hadn't felt the need to articulate exactly why he hates critics. It wasn't our fault "Iron Giant" tanked, Brad. We all loved it!

In the Pixar Pantheon, I have "The Incredibles" far up in first. It's a great movie, quite deserving of a place on the AFI Top 100. I place the two "Toy Story" movies in second and third (pick your order). I think "Ratatouille" can go soon after that, ahead of "Bug's Life," "Monsters Inc." and "Finding Nemo" (in that order) and far ahead of "Cars." That's not a bad position to be in.

Although guaranteed at least a nomination in the animated short category, "Lifted" is by far the slightest of the Pixar shorts in recent years. It's very cute and adds up to very little, which wasn't the case with "Boundin'" or "One Man Band," much less "Geri's Game."

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MovieWatch: "A Scanner Darkly"

"A Scanner Darkly"
Director: Richard Linklater
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 42
In a Nutshell: An interesting failure? Richard Linklater has taken a book that was supposedly Philip K. Dick's most autobiographical and given it a bizarre spin that could best be described as stylized banality. Although the movie is roto-scoped in the same way that characterized Linklater's "Waking Life," most of the movie requires and justifies no such aesthetic, which is almost the point. It's a borderline sci-fi story about an undercover narcotics officer (Keanu Reeves) and the deadbeat druggies he's infiltrated and become part of. When the movie shows the effects of the film's new designer drug Substance D, the animators get to have a field day, inserting bugs and aliens and other weirdness. For the majority of the movie, though, the film simulates a sort of junkie logic and as he's been doing since "Slacker," Linklater just enjoys sitting back and recording the patter, even if it isn't even particularly profound in its subtext. In those scenes -- scenes that make up most of the movie -- it's hard to shake the impression that Linklater has directed a stagnant movie of static close-ups and discordant performances and left it to the animators to cover up his failings in plot, character and imagery. At a certain point, the originality of the film's style wore off and it became nearly as monotonous as listening to a Keanu Reeves voice-over, which has to be as mind-numbing as an experience this side of Substance D. Yes, I can see how that might be Linklater's point and I can intellectually work myself into a place where I was interested by "A Scanner Darkly," but not into a place where I enjoyed it.

A note: Because I'm respectful I'm observing embargoes on "Monster House" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." As soon as reviews start popping up online for either, I'll write a blurb on my impressions of both films.

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