2 Pixar Films in 2 Days

In 24 hours I watched two Pixar films: Ratatouille and Wall-E.

Ratatouille: A classic example of a movie trying to do too many things such that none of the storylines end up being very satisfying. That, and none of the characters were particularly likable. Quite frankly, they were all kind of jerks. It felt like, at some point, the writers got tired of writing the main female character’s part, so they just had Linguini kiss her and shut her up for the rest of the film (never mind that Linguini was inappropriately young for her). That and she looked exactly like the Catherine Zeta-Jones character in The Incredibles. And the evil chef was just a recycled evil version of Edna Mode. Just seems like the folks at Pixar got lazy. Either that or the concept (it’s a rat who’s chef, get it? you can't have a rat in a kitchen) was better than the execution (wait, how do we make it believable that a rat could learn to read, cook and then control a guy… oh crap). This movie is a text-book example of how narration is more often than not a warning sign you're about to see a poor film.

I did laugh occasionally, but overall I was disappointed. Perhaps I had heard too many people say they liked it and my expectations had been raised too high.



Wall-E: Great! Wonderful. Go see it. Seriously. I wish I could be more eloquent about it, but it’s been a long weekend and my brain is quite frankly unable to string together anything that could possibly do the genius of Wall-E justice. If you want to read a well written review, read Prince’s (just take his thoughts on Ratatouille with a grain of salt). If you want must know more about my personal experience with the film: It grabbed me by the eyeballs from the opening and proceeded to pull out my heart, nearly break it, then sow it back together and slide it lovingly back into my chest while all the while turning up the corners of my mouth into laughing smiles and giving my brain serious food for thought about the fate of the world. Time stopped and the kind of movie magic that justifies the existence of film happened.



Wall-E and Hello Dolly