We took Quinn to a matinee at the movies today to see WALL·E. As one would expect from a Pixar movie it was beautifully rendered. However the implementation of the story is about as far removed from previous Pixar stories as you can get. Since it's a Pixar movie, one has to assume this was made to be a kid movie. Having said that I can only recall three or four times that Quinn actually laughed during the movie. Also, the overall plot for the movie and the themes presented in it are a bit above some younger kids. Now your kid may be a genius and had no problem following all the nuances, but I'm guessing a lot of the subtle messages, such as Earth becoming uninhabitable due to the abundance of discarded produced goods, were lost on Quinn and probably a lot of other kids. One of the real treats I think of previous Pixar movies is how they get some high level talent to do the voices for their characters. So it's a bit of a surprise that in this movie the protagonist doesn't really talk throughout the entire movie but makes noises kind of like an animated R2-D2. Overall I was a bit disappointed by the movie whereas Ginger outright disliked it. Quinn enjoyed the experience of going to the movie as well as the giant bucket of popcorn, but I'm not sure he loved the movie. It does look fantastic and the eye candy is phenomenal, but I don't think that can carry the movie given the obvious flaws in other areas. It's very pretty, but the story and themes just don't really mesh with a kid movie in my mind.
Monday, August 11, 2008
WALL·E
We took Quinn to a matinee at the movies today to see WALL·E. As one would expect from a Pixar movie it was beautifully rendered. However the implementation of the story is about as far removed from previous Pixar stories as you can get. Since it's a Pixar movie, one has to assume this was made to be a kid movie. Having said that I can only recall three or four times that Quinn actually laughed during the movie. Also, the overall plot for the movie and the themes presented in it are a bit above some younger kids. Now your kid may be a genius and had no problem following all the nuances, but I'm guessing a lot of the subtle messages, such as Earth becoming uninhabitable due to the abundance of discarded produced goods, were lost on Quinn and probably a lot of other kids. One of the real treats I think of previous Pixar movies is how they get some high level talent to do the voices for their characters. So it's a bit of a surprise that in this movie the protagonist doesn't really talk throughout the entire movie but makes noises kind of like an animated R2-D2. Overall I was a bit disappointed by the movie whereas Ginger outright disliked it. Quinn enjoyed the experience of going to the movie as well as the giant bucket of popcorn, but I'm not sure he loved the movie. It does look fantastic and the eye candy is phenomenal, but I don't think that can carry the movie given the obvious flaws in other areas. It's very pretty, but the story and themes just don't really mesh with a kid movie in my mind.
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3 comments:
i read somewhere recently that pixar movies (particularly the incredibles, finding nemo, and now this) are adult movies but made with kids in mind. they tend to have a very adult theme to them:
incredibles = family ties and identity.
nemo = loss and parenting.
wall-e = environmental issues.
normally they are made with enough eye candy and excitement that kids will enjoy seeing them too, but they are not necessarily the target audience. marketing of so many movies like this is so misleading.
movies like this are made this way so they can be enjoyed by kids but really they are 'grown-up' movies.
just because it has a U cert doesn't mean that it is aimed at kids, it simply means that the content is suitable for kids. i have a david lynch movie called 'the straight story' which is a U, this doesn't make it a kids film.
my boys want to go see this - so do i.
James, I think you are crazy. This was an awesome movie and even Loren (2.5 years old) made it through 20 minutes of previews and then 20 minutes of the movie before getting bored (and I think it was more the loud noise of Eve's ship that made her decide she had enough). Yes, it starts off slow and has very little dialog, but the pace quickens and life on earth is nicely juxtaposed to the lives on the ship. Perhaps it is a little more advanced than something like Cars, but I still thought it was outstanding.
Perhaps as a suburban mega-consumer you had a problem with the message? ;-)
gaz: i read somewhere recently that pixar movies (particularly the incredibles, finding nemo, and now this) are adult movies but made with kids in mind.
Hmmm, I guess in my head I had always thought it was the other way around. That they made the movies for kids, but added enough other subtle stuff to keep adults entertained also. You might be right and I've just been looking at it wrong.
Capt Sawyer: James, I think you are crazy.
You won't be the first.
Capt Sawyer: This was an awesome movie
I'll agree it was good, and even better than a lot of other movies. In fact, I never said I didn't like the movie, what I said was Ginger didn't like it and I was disappointed. And that's because it's Pixar and therefore I was expecting it to be fantastic, so it fell short of my overly optimistic expectations. I was also expecting it to be more kid friendly, and I think it failed a bit there. I actually liked the movie itself, but it just wasn't as accessible to younger kids as I thought it should be. If I hadn't taken Quinn to see it in the theater and had simply watched it at home I probably would have enjoyed it more, but that's not what happened. And because I saw it in a theater with Quinn part of my opinion of how the movie performed is based on how I think it did at performing for him, and there I feel it fell short.
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