If you haven’t seen Wall-E, stop reading this, stop doing whatever you’re doing and see it. If it’s late at night, start planning your excuse to skip work tomorrow and go to the earliest showing of it. Wall-E is that good a movie.

Seriously, I can’t remember when last a cartoon movie made me feel like an honest to God kid and filled me with so much wonder.

Wall-E is a fantastic movie, in a line of fantastic movies that have sprung from Pixar over the last decade or so. Pixar is the computer animation giant that breathed new life to a waning Disney animation empire.

Wall-E is at heart a kid’s movie but it’s so, so much more. It’s almost beyond describing. For much of the first half of the movie we follow the interactions of two cute robots and a bug, in what could nearly be called a silent film. Later on, when the adventure of Wall-E gets intergalactic, we run into a few characters who, while they add quite a bit to the movie, still play second fiddle to Wall-E and EVA.

The animation is fantastic, quite possibly some of the best Pixar has done. The images of a devastated Earth not only hit close to home but send a chill with the lack of human characters. The musical accompaniment (thankfully missing the vocals of Randy Newman, who sadly seems to sing the exact same song for every movie he has done music in) just seems to fit the spirit of adventure and the fantastic voyage being undertaken.

In the end, Wall-E is awesome. It’s one of those rare movies that runs the risk of being viewed as too cute until you see it and realize it has a lot of heart, is deeper than its simple facade, and will most definitely bring out the kid in you. And the cartoon short before it, “Presto,” instantly made me long for old school cartoons just like. No intricate plots, no multiple episode epics, just wacky antics that can only be delivered neatly and tidily through a five minute cartoon.

Go see Wall-E.

5 out of 5.

Posted in Animated, Comedy, Impressions, Movies |