by Allan Fish
(USA 2008 98m) DVD1/2
Buy N Large – your very best friend
p Jim Morris d Andrew Stanton w Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon story Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter ed Steven Schaffer m Thomas Newman art Ralph Eggleston
Fred Willard (Shelby Forthright, BNL, CEO),
VOICES BY:- Ben Burtt (WALL-E/M.O.), Elissa Knight (EVE), Jeff Garlin (Captain), John Ratzenberger (John), Sigourney Weaver (Ship’s Computer), Kathy Najimy (Mary), Kim Kopf (Hoverchair mother),
OK, imagine that C3-PO wasn’t gay and R2D2 was female. Er, maybe not. OK, start over. He adored Hello Dolly, he idolised it out of all proportion. No, no, no…this isn’t Antz, go away, Woody. Deep breath…now, imagine that the Earth was no longer populated by humans. Imagine that it was approximately seven hundred years into the future, and all the humans have long since departed on Operation Recolonize. That’s better…here we go.
Wall-E (Waste Allocation Lift Loader (Earth-class), is a small robot who has spent the seven centuries since mankind’s departure form earth doing what he was programmed to do; compress the garbage and waste materials left behind into easy to stack cubes. He’s been doing it for so long you can imagine how bored he is. His only company is a cricket, and his only pleasures are finding weird and wonderful things – Rubik cube, light bulbs, gnomes, a VHS tape of Hello Dolly – in amongst the debris and taking them back to his shack. One day, out of the sky, a space ship descends and a smart, white assumedly female droid which hovers and doesn’t touch the ground, is left behind. She’s called EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), and she’s here to forage for signs of life to take back to the mother ship where the humans are living awaiting the time to return home. Wall-E has never seen anything so lovely before and, as much out of loneliness as out of love, follows her everywhere. Eventually, she befriends him, but on the point of Wall-E becoming a very happy robot, the mother ship returns and takes her with it, but Wall-E, in desperation, hitches a lift and so begins the adventure of his life.
Disney had long had a reputation for anthropomorphising the behaviour of animals, but Pixar had been doing so for inanimate objects for years. There had been animated films on the subject of artificial intelligence before, most notably the forgettable Robots, but Wall-E blows that and most other animated films out of the water. It’s a staggering achievement. Many will scoff at the rather straightforward story, and yet one does wonder if they truly realise who the target audience is here. This is a kids movie, and yet, as with all the best of Pixar, there’s much here for adults to enjoy, from the idea of humans turning into blobby masses due to losing bones outside of the Earth’s atmosphere to the same atmosphere being littered with metallic intergalactic litter to signs advertising Outlet Malls on the Moon to the idea of robots dancing to Michael Crawford in Hello Dolly and falling in love. Not to mention the music played around the captain – Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss, all very Kubrickian – and the idea of the ship’s computer being Ellen Ripley. Or maybe Ripley morphed into Mother?
EVE is at first a rather cold creature, but Wall-E himself (a bit like No 5 in Short Circuit, except soooooooo much better) is cute right from the get-go. Here’s a character in the E.T. mould. He even talks like him, his love-struck murmurs of “Eee-vah” (he can’t pronounce EVE correctly) are enough to melt hearts of stone, and as is customary, there’s that moment of sadness before the joy, where EVE believes Wall-E has lost his memory of her and painfully turns to leave him. Equal parts a romantic comedy for artificial life-forms and an eco-nightmare of the future, Wall-E is simply another in the conveyor belt of animated classics to come out of the Pixar stable. Each time we wonder when it will end. Rather let us savour each film as it comes and, for old and young alike, Wall-E is about as good as it gets.
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This animated masterpiece is a strong contender for Best Film of 2008 at this point. It has the emotional power of Spielberg’s E.T., and its probably the most technologically avanced and challenging amimated film we have had.
No film released this year has received better reviews from the professional critics.
A wonderful Thanksgiving post.
I AGREE THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST ANIMATED MOVIES!
Mr. Fish this is an outstanding essay of a film I still have not forgotten, nor am likely to.
Thanks, Robert.
What the f…?
Okay, a good sci-fi animated movie. I’ll give it that. Right ahead of “Moon”, though? Can’t say I respect it that much. It’s good for what it is, though– dystopian satire space opera in child-sized bites. One of Pixar’s better efforts from the decade (and a hell of a lot better than overrated dreck like “Up” and “Finding Nemo”). A good movie for kids, but for grown-ups, easily outgrown.
Oh, and a C-3PO gay-joke? Really? Somehow, I thought you’d be above that…
Personally, Moon provoked some thinking, I appreciated and respected it. Wall-E transported me to another world. There is much to analyze beyond subjective reactions, certainly (though the ultimate ground would be subjective as well – i.e. breaking through the deeper appreciation through aesthetics & analysis, the latter being the means rather than the end). But that’s my first take on the matter. (Also, cinematically I think Wall-E does as much/more as Moon.) Anyway, I’m glad to see both on the list though I’d put this one a bit higher.
One of Allan’s strongest pieces too, with a really fun intro.
Joel, I concur that this is one of Allan’s greatest reviews. He says everything that needs to be said in a compelling and economical fashion, and as you note, there are creative embellishments. Fantastic work!
Here’s a worthy rival to Moon for best sci-fi film of the decade. It’s also a brilliant exercise in voice acting, eschewing the easy route of recognizable star voices in favor of milking the maximum emotional range from a severely limited vocabulary. You know how they calculate the exchange rate of pictures and words? In WALL-E a single word like “directive” is nearly worth a thousand words of other cartoon scripts.
Every year, lately, I look at the previews for the newest Pixar film and tell myself, “This is where they blow it” and I convince myself to wait for the DVD. Then I rent it and say, “Nope. They’ve done it again.” I’m doing it again this year, and with a tendency to sequelitis emerging I actually feel it more strongly, but Pixar has been beating the odds with uncanny regularity, and the studio deserves the representation it’s received on this list.
Frankly, I really do think they blew it at “Up”– a movie with great potential if the first act had been allowed to be the whole film itself. But all that nonsense once they set foot in the jungle just about ruined it for me. Overgrown dodo birds, talking dogs and mustache-twirling villainy? I’ll pass. There was so much genuine emotion and adventure in those first thirty-odd minutes, it’s sad to see how it was squandered in the rest.
Their work is so spectacular Samuel, that some bloggers look for ways to tarnish it as there is frustration at the incomparable excellence on display year after year.
Bob actually makes fair hits on UP, and more could be made, but I still count it as another Pixar success overall.
I like this one a lot. The vision of Earth’s desolate future, its barren landscape, a first for animation and a defining moment for PIXAR. BOB is way off course here (sorry, BOB), the film resonates with a kind of immediacy that not only has never been done in a film primarily geared for children, but even films for adults. It continues the near perfect string of film hits for PIXAR, and even bests a few in the process (frankly, I thought nothing would best NEMO and RATATOUILLE). I’m a bigger admirer of THE INCREDIBLES (full of adult issues rarely hit upon in live action), but this one comes so close that its shaving hairs. PIXAR again and again proves themselves the most original, creative and ingenius of all the Hollywood studios out there. With CHILDREN OF MEN this is the BEST Sci-Fi of the decade and one of the most emotional love stories to boot. Great essay by Allan!!!!!
I don’t buy the “let-down” mid-section theory on UP for a second, BOB. Without the hijinx in the mid-section we can never come full circle to the denoument that brings Carl and Russel’s bond. The house plopping EXACTLY where Ellie and Carl dreamed of living and the villian vanquished. Its an enourmous irony that pays off in spades at the end and almost tops the emotion that started the journey at the beginning. With the exception of CARS, PIXAR has pitched an almost perfect record of no hit games. They learn from each film they make and one-up the stakes with the film following directly. The animation is getting more natural and realistic and every big named actor is banging their door down to lend their voice. The reason is clear. PIXAR has more ingenuity than any other film production company out there. TOY STORY, BUGS LIFE, INCREDIBLES, NEMO, RATATOUILLE, WALL-E. You’ll have a hard time bashing that record or the love viewers, serious viewers, have for these flicks. WALL-E is a masterpiece. PERIOD.
This is way ahead of MOON in every way imaginable, and in fact it’s one of the five best films of the entire decade, period. Here’s my brief capsule:
. “The visionary animated film that may well be regarded one day as one of the greatest of all animated features, stretches the boundaries of the form, and of art in general. This science-fiction parable/love story is wrought in the mold of Spielberg’s E.T., but its a film that echos the silent era in it’s post-apocalyptic extended early sequence. The film’s soaring emotional center is the robot trash compactor “WALL-E’s” infatuation with songs from the film Hello Dolly! and the later relationship with his counterpart, Eve. The film has it’s level of cynicism, and there’s a hopelessness that recalls A.I. Technically and in its painstaking attention to detail it may well be the most accomplished of animated films. It is an exhilarating film of great physical beauty and wonderment, yet like all great art, its heartbreak is palpable. The voice work and Thomas Newman’s score are first-rate, but the lion’s share of the credit must go to director Andrew Stanton, who made a film of extraordinary depth, bringing together an arsenal of cinematic resources, and shooting a laser beam to the very center of the human heart.”
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association made one of their most inspired choices ever, by “moving outside the box” and naming this the best film of 2008.
MOVIEMAN-AGREED. I appreciate everything that MOON did, but WALL-E took me someplace I’d never been before. The opening shots od Wall-E’s day to day existance amidst the backdrop of the post global-warming/industial nightmare is, frankly, unsettling. By introducing his lonely life in this setting, the film-makers force, beautifully, a nervous rush for identification with the only person/thing that takes them slightly aeway from the devastation that dominates the frame. The pathos is not only welcomed, but relieving and, as such, draws you closer to the simplicity of Wall-E’s adventure in love. Frankly, I don’t recall any film in this decade (or last) that so perfectly commented on real companionship and soul connection as this film. The more I think about it the more I convince myself that this one IS Pixar’s BEST FILM to date.
Yes, Dennis WALL-E is absolutely Pixar’s best film to date, and that’s saying something. I’d rank them this way:
1 WALL-E
2 RATATOUILLE
3 UP
4 A BUG’S LIFE
5 THE INCREDIBLES
6 TOY STORY 2
7 MONSTER’S INC.
8 TOY STORY
etc.
Speaking of animation, I have an appointment at 11:30 A.M. this morning with my complete brood to see the newest SHREK movie at the Edgewater multiplex. Ha! I’d much rather watch WALL-E yet again!
SHREK-EH, one note joke dragged out over an hour aqnd a half. The animation is devoid of soul and the writers/directors rely on bathroom humor, over-the-top sight gags and all-star voice actors to divert your attention away from how phoned in it all really is. ANTZ supplied some scope to DREAMWORKS early computer animation canon but, up until the recent HOW TO TRSAIN YOUR DRAGON, the results of this cartoon factory have been messy and uninspired at best. They have yet to tackle a big subject in their work and by default (they really kinda suck), they make PIXAR look even better. Call it quantity (Dreamworks) versus quality (Pixar). Actually, I’m thrilled they’re retiring SHREK, it was tired after the first twenty minutes of the original movie.
Dennis, I personally think that Dreamworks also delivered a cool flick with “Kung Fu Panda” a few years back. Quite clever, respectful and imaginative in its approach to Chinese culture, and has quite the winning sense of style.
But, I always thought the difference between Pixar and Dreamworks is like the difference between THE SIMPSON and FAMILY GUY. One is a tightly presented show that comments on today’s important subjects through lunatic humor, creative writing and animation that get more refined with every passing year (THE SIMPSONS) and the other, with its choppy animation, unlikeable and annoying characters reduces its humor to sight gags and dialogue that, at best, is more akin of a drunk rambling on pointlessly in some white trash trailer park community bar (FAMILY GUY). It always amazes me how populal F.G. is. But, then again, the audience that dominates that show are in an age bracket that is just entering middle school. Class versus Crapola….
…and then SOUTH PARK owns them both.
Man, I would have loved seeing this higher… like top 30 kinda higher.
I love this movie, it’s easily the best animated movie made in USA ever, that’s the kind of praise I have for this magnificent movie, it just fills me with joy every time I see it.
You and me both Jaime. I have this as my #4 film of the decade and the best film of its year.
BTW Jaime, later tonight when I get back from a play in Manhattan, I will put your blogsite on our sidebar.
Wow, thanks man.
It’s an exceptional movie, but best animated movie in the US ever? Above Pinocchio? I don’t think so. But after Toy Story it’s the best of the Pixars.
I actually as a kid hated Disney movies, all of them, except for The Lion King. Now I can find more love for them, but still my inner child commands and tells me that my first instinct is right.
Never really loved Toy Story, so I don’t have that much hope on number 3 as many people I know do.
I still don’t really get the love people have for “Toy Story”– a great watershed movie, sure, but not much else. Lasseter’s a great studio head, but all the great Pixar films have been handled by better directors than he (Stanton, Doctor, Bird).
Hi! Sam Juliano, Allan, and WitD…
I must admit that this is a great (“great” may be to “strong “a word to use…) film…I must also admit that I thought that I wasn’t going to like this film…before I placed it in the DVDr…but, lo and behold…
…I have since viewed the film Wall-E on many occasion(s).
Oh! yes, it’s on my list of Best Films of 2000… Allan said,”Each time we wonder when it will end. Rather let us savour each film as it comes and, for old and young alike, Wall-E is about as good as it gets.”
Allan, I have to second your notion…Thanks, for sharing the review too!
By the way,Sam Juliano, my top five favorite Disney’s Pixar animated films are:
1.RATATOUILLE…But, of course!
2.THE INCREDIBLES
3.Wall-E
4. TOY STORY and
5.TOY STORY 2
DeeDee 😉 🙂
Let’s take it easy here. I’m floored, obviously, by the love most of us have for this film. As a student of animation (I studied it along with comic book illustration, graphic design and painting), I too sing its praises. But, and I know its just an personal opinion to some and I defend it, this is NOT the greatest animated film ever made. Let us not lose sight of the history of this form that surrounds WALL-E. The animated feature has gone through many different phases and many a director/ designer has left their singular imprint on the genre. WALL-E is a contender for the best COMPUTER ANIMATED film so far, but its still gotta get past legendary HAND ANIMATION classics first. Of the classics, it seems that Uncle Walt has pretty much dominated this field. SNOW WHITE, FANTASIA, BAMBI all, immediately spring to mind. In later years there were BEAUTY AND THE BEAST/ THE LION KING. However, even with all of em, and PIXAR vying for spots, it seems to me that 1940’s PINOCCHIO is still the one to beat.
Let’s not forget “Sleeping Beauty”– that’s my personal fave from the Silver Age of Disney.
And, not to get on my high horse, as Disney and Animationn is a field of expertise for me… I’ll go on to say that, using a phrase I try not to use and that Sam is famous for; PINOCCHIO is one of the few American films that can justifiably be labeled, without question a STAGGERING MASTERPIECE. Its a PERFECT film that not only has charmed and entertained generations of film-goers, but leaves them completely in awe with its impeccable story-telling, artistic design, brilliant editing and pacing, beloved characters and a opening theme song that is, without question, one of the five greatest EVER written for film. I LOVE WALL-E, I sing its praises. But it doesn’t come within a miles of Disney’s supreme masterwork.
Here’s something interesting, and we can all play along… When I was in Art School (College), my professor in the field of film/animation history/analysis asked all of us a simple question to familiarize us to him and our perception on filn. His question, to start the course, was this: WHAT WAS THE VERY FIRST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATRE? WHEN WAS IT? WHAT WERE THE CONDITIONS REGARDING YOU SEEING IT? Then, after we answered that one, he asked: NOW, WHAT WAS THE MOVIE THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE (MADE YOU WANT TO STUDY FILM)? In almost EVERY case, each student, 60 in the class, all cited a Disney film as the first film they ever saw… I THINK IT WOULD BE INTERSTING TO SEE HOW THE FREQUENTERS OF WITD WOULD ANSWER THOSE SAME QUESTIONS… So, anyone wanna start???????
The first movie you saw in theaters, or the first movie you REMEMBER seeing in a theater? Because honestly, I can’t really recall any of the stuff I was taken to see at age two or three– maybe a Disney movie, maybe a Muppet movie, possibly “The Chipmunks Adventure”, though I grew up in the age of VHS so it’s really not certain. As for what movie I remember seeing at an early age in cinemas and might conceivably be the first– the live-action “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” with effects from the Jim Henson studios. Either that or “Hook” (again, with VHS, it’s tough for me to mentally pin some of this down).
On second thought– I actually might’ve seen “The Land Before Time” in theaters. Again, going that far back (age four) is hazy.
Fun question Dennis. My first theater experiences that I remember were ET (which I believe was on a re-release), LAND BEFORE TIME, TURNER AND HOOCH, and one of the FIEVEL films. Oddly enough I cried at the end of all of them.
Really I think my film-fan status started though with one film: SCANNERS. My parents would get (then new) HBO/SHOWTIME in the summers when my sisters and I were home from school so we could watch films if we were bored or it was rainy. I remember trying my hardest to watch horror films because of the ban on them imposed by my parents, if for no other reason then because it felt wrong. I caught SCANNERS once, didn’t understand it but was mesmerized by the exploding head. I remember never thinking it was scary or gross, but rather that some craftsman artfully created that fake head then realistically filled it with red syrup and blue it up. It was a strange way to few scary material but it was how I always did. Shortly there after I became a slasher film fan (and a lover of Savini’s work, even if I didn’t know who he was). I quickly spent my time watching films alone and drawing/painting, or playing sports outside. That was it. And it started with SCANNERS.
The first movie I saw multiple times at the theater? JURASSIC PARK.
BOB-Great choice with SLEEPING BEAUTY. Its visual style is based on Renaissance painting and tapestry and its use of the Tchaikovski themes helps the film flow to its amazing dramatic final moments. Malificent, the bad fairie (witch) is one of the great Disney villians (although Cruella DeVille was actually voted the nastiest on an AOL poll just a few years ago-I agree BTW), and the moment she transforms into the fire-breathing dragon is one of Disney’s best action moments! Terrific choice!!!!!
Malificent is truly my favorite of Disney’s vilainesses– she’s still got a large draw of fans to this day, who relish in her unrepentant, yet strangely somehow noble blend of evil. Of course, one of the other big draws for that movie is the Prince– unlike the charming Ken-Dolls of movies like “Snow White” and “Cinderella”, this guy actually gets some things to do over the course of the film, and be a proactive character of his own in the female-dominated fairy-tale. He’s a dynamic figure who looks forward to the increasingly more masculine heroisms of Disney protagonists, as they sought to draw in more boys, especially in the 80’s and 90’s.
I also love the fact that Disney made a habit of scaring the shit out of kids with just about every film he and the “nine old men” (his top animators) ever made. The death of Bambi’s mother is probably the front and center moment; but, then there’s the demon Chernabog rising out of Bald Mountain in FANTASIA, the flight of Ichabod for the covered bridge in THE ADEVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR TOAD, Lampwicks transformation into a jackass (that one could be the VERY best) in PINOCCHIO, the old hag offering the apple in SNOW WHITE, the rat in the baby’s room in LADY AND THE TRAMP, the pink elephant parade in DUMBO, Mufasa’s death in the gorge in THE LION KING, the list goes on like a psychedelic acid trip. Did anyone frighten better than Walt? It was part of his magic to bring you so close to the edge and then snap you back into safety. He was a genius.
Walt was the one who decided to kill of Simba’s dad, Dennis? Really? I guess Michael Eisner must thaw the old man’s head out every once in a while to ask for his ideas…
Re: Bambi’s mom– I actually remember that as not really scaring or upsetting me, as a child, but rather teaching me the lesson of foreshadowing. As soon as I heard her say “Don’t go in the thicket!”, I figured, “She’s gonna go into the thicket at some point, isn’t she?”. What’s great is that they set up the scene for later, earning the emotional payoff.
BOB-Yes, yes. Malificent is “noble” in her sadism. One of the most beautiful moments of dialoque, music and visuals in SLEEPING BEAUTY is when she TOO bestows a gift on the infant princess (the prophecy and curse of her sleeping death as a young adult by the pricking of her finger on the poisoned spindle of the spinning wheel). She is graceful, respectful and politely callous in her maniacal machination. Couldn’t the kings just have invited her to the birthday party and avoid all her wrath and trouble?????? Its a delicately chilling moment in that great film.
Alright BOB, get technical….. LOL! When I said “WALT” I meant WALT DISNEY films in general scaring the shit out of kids. Walt himself set up the blue-print structure of the films. Its a guide-line his successors all follow, even Pixar, to jolt the viewer. So count Roy, Mike Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg as extensions of Uncle Walt…. OK?????? LOL! No harm, no foul….
Well, I think it’s a distinction worth pointing out, as remember, the Disney studios languished for more than a few years without Walt himself at the helm, languishing through much of the 70’s and 80’s with cheap animation and cheaper storylines. It wasn’t until the late 80’s and early 90’s that they picked up with stuff like “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty & the Beast” and “Aladdin”– the oft-named “Disney Renaissance”, something which only really ended as the torch was passed to Pixar in the mid 90’s.
Indeed, Bob, Disney was the soul of his own place, the real creative force behind them even though he didn’t direct any of them (not since the last Black and White Silly Symphonies with Ub Iwerks). Though to be fair, Disney had been regurgitating itself in the years post Bambi. Those first five classics meant that Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and all that followed, though okay, were going to struggle with the Legacy. Ironically, I can kind of agree that Sleeping Beauty is the one that nearly makes it. OK, the Once Upon a Dream is enough to have Tchikovsky rotating in his grave like an electric eel, but the use of the score itself other than that is excellent and the design magnificent, utilising the Scope format as it never would after. The reason it wasn’t a hit was because Disney was no longer hip to the times and then in the video years its only being available in panned and scanned prints totally ruined the composition. Since the advent of letterbox DVDs and Blu Rays, the detail will get noticed more, the artistry (the dance of Maleficant’s evil but dim helpers recalling the Moussorgsky sequence in Fantasia). After this, they did 101 Dalmations, and they had to devise a new way of animating to stop artists going insane drawing 101 spotted dogs. It was cheaper, but it looked like painted drawings and lost the old depth and detail. Sadly, they kept with it to keep costs down and this meant no major Disney feature animations were made from 1961 to 1989 (it amazes me when people talk about The Jungle Book as a classic when it wouldn’t come in the top dozen of their animated films), when The Little Mermaid, though not great in itself, showcased the new computer animation that led to the brief Renaissance in the early 90s.
Agreed BOB, noted. But, the basic structure for a “Disney” animated film, including PIXAR, is the same. Whether the lamental down period starting at his death in 67 up to THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE that hinted at what was about to turn around in 87, the films all have that on scary moment that Walt prided himself in. The torch was humbly picked up by Eisner and Katzenberg who honored the timeless code. The Cave OF Wonders moment or Jafar turning into a cobra in ALADDIN are moments that Walt would have relished. I feel he would have also been pleased with the OOGY BOOGIE sequence in Sellick and Burton’s NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. That film, which still blows me away, alsi fillows the structure Walt conveyed decades early. it might have thrown him a bit if he saw it but, eventually, I think he would have warmed up to it. NIGHTMARE is a charming, creative, wonder-inducing film.
I agree with Allan’s brief but correct history above pertaining to the Disney canon. However, what Allan doesn’t say is that, while they were skimping with the animation process, they were, in the case of 101 DALMATIONS, kicking full crank on the story and character aspects. DALMATIANS was that rare diamond in a sea of rough where the animation style (far grittier than the typical Disney gloss) actaully added to the film. Where they scored with DALMATIANS was in the strength of the characters (Cruella DeVille is the standout, all self-centered, repugnant, loud and brash) and intricate plotting (the wonderful barking chain that alerts Pongo and Perdy to the whereabouts of the puppies is a standout). There is a jazziness to the mid section flicks that, while a far cry from the elegance of the early five, that both entertains and makes the audience say: “gee, that’s really neat.” DALMATIANS is the best of these slap-and-dash films. I also agree S. B. Is underrated due to its unfortunate cropped presentation.
YES, ALLAN, I agree with you above as well. I think I wrote three comment bubbles on the prowess of PINOCCHIO. In my mind, as I’m sure I’m not alone, there isn’t even a competition. Each shot is a masterwork of seamless animation, multiplane camera work, color and music. The character development on PINOCCHIO is the strongest in the history of the form and the film is, in and of itself, just tainted with magic. Scene after unforgettable scene one-ups the last one culminating in the battle with Monstro the Whale that is, singularly, one of the most spectacularly detailef and animated sequences in history. Its both awe-inducing and terrifying at the same moment. Disney had always lamented that FANTASIA didn’t catch on the way he wanted it to. However, although reluctantly, he always admitted that PINOCCHIO, while not HIS favorite, was the one that came out damn near perfect. IT IS!
Bravo, Allan. I love how you always have a place in your lists (and heart) for films that may be made for children (from Tom and Jerry to this) but are amazing regardless of who watches them. 2nd favourite Pixar after the simply sublime Monsters, Inc. for me (though I still have A Bug’s Life on my shelf).
Give it another 50 years a people will be talking in awe about Pixar, the way you guys are about Disney. The difference between them was that Disney ruined his own company with his egocentric, racist and paraniod delusions, whilst Pixar work as a team and have already had a running streak of winners way past Disney’s golden age (which for me, lasted from ‘Snow White’ to ‘Bambi’).
Bobby, I might be a bit more respectful of that early Disney era, but I do agree with what you say here essentially and of Pixar’s pre-eminence. Great comment!