(Unexpected) Movie Recommendation of the Month

Dreamworks take note: this is how you make an animated film that competes with Pixar (or at least doesn't embarrass itself trying). I had no intention to see this movie, but my girlfriend is a 1st-grade teacher, so I guess it was inevitable. I was not in the greatest mood either after having to trek down to the lobby twice in order to get the prerequisite 3-D glasses necessary to watch the movie without developing a migraine. Our ticket-taker neglected to hand them to us despite the box being directly behind her and the theater not being particularly busy. Then when I came back downstairs sans ticket, she told me I needed the ticket in order to get the glasses. You know because people like taking cheap 3-D glasses for no reason save for how kewl they look. Why must it always be so difficult?

Anyways, the film managed to lighten my mood considerably. Bill Hader provides the voice of Flint, the somewhat hapless inventor in the small town/island of Swallow Falls (located under the 'A' in 'Atlantic Ocean' on the map). I didn't even realize it was Hader until the credits. Between this and his dead-on James Carville on SNL a while back, he's really starting to impress me. (Another note to Dreamworks: actually employ voice talent based on talent, and not just how famous the actual voice is, mmkay?) James Caan voices Tim, Flint's Luddite father who spends most of the film disapproving of Flint's work with his demonstrative furrowed brow. The film also employs the under-appreciated comedic talents of Anna Faris (if she were a guy she'd be as successful as Seth Rogen by now; there is no justice!). Plus there's Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell and Mr. T (!). Really impressive line-up to say the least.

The plot is pretty straight-forward with Flint inventing a device that turns water into food and accidentally launching it into the atmosphere. This in turn makes Swallow Falls the most sought after tourist destination in the world. Of course things go awry as the machine goes haywire from over-use. The movie takes its time to flesh out the relationships between the characters, especially the one between Flint and his father which is central to the film. We also get a nice romantic angle with Faris's somewhat ditzy (but secretly brainy) Sam Sparks. One of the most memorable scenes involves a reversal of the cliched "girl takes off glasses and lets down her hair, turns out to be stunning"-routine seen in countless stories since Hans Christian Anderson picked up a pen.

The movie does get all action-adventure-y in the 3rd act, but I didn't mind. It didn't feel as if the transition was unwarranted. It fit with the story well enough. Also I liked how most of Flint's past failed inventions popped up again for a bit of redemption. Some real thought went into this project. This adaptation couldn't really rely on the book for its narrative or so I've been told. So much credit to the creative team behind the film (I loved how the film opens with the credit "A film by a lot of people").

Let's be clear: this does not match up to Pixar in top gear (i.e. Wall-E, Nemo, Up or Ratatouille). But it's miles beyond the execrable Shrek sequels. I'd put it right up there with Toy Story 2, maybe a bit above. Definitely above say Cars. Either way, Sony should definitely be proud of this. It won't do anywhere near as well as the Ice Age franchise (I guess you can't compete with prehistoric mammals, who knew?), but artistically this is revelatory for a non-Pixar film. Expectations have been raised.

It Takes a Lot of Effort to Make It Look So Effortless

Pixar continues to evolve. I really expected a letdown after the masterful Wall-E. I would have forgiven Pixar if Up had been a lesser film. But no these guys refuse to relent. Here's the most successful U.S. animation studio both commercially and artistically of the new century and they are still willing to try things that their rivals wouldn't even begin to think about. What other studio would be brazen enough to attempt to include (let alone integrate into a single project) the following in what is ostensibly a kid’s film: a septuagenarian hero; a scene depicting a woman’s infertility and her subsequent emotional recovery from said; a funeral? Exactly what is Up? A kid's film about loss, letting go and embracing non-traditional ideas of family. Yeah, maybe Dreamworks will touch on some of these themes in Shrek 4.

Even if the film turned out to be a disaster, I'd give them props for the attempt. Luckily, it's nowhere near that. Instead it's a minor masterpiece with some of the most sumptuous visuals ever seen in a computer-animated film. It doesn't even need the state-of-the-art visuals, because these guys just know how to tell a story. Almost from the opening sequence, you can tell how much the creators care about their creations. There's more character development in the first five minutes of Up than in the entire bloated two-and-a-half plus hours of TF2. The film never resorts to cheap scatological humor which is rare these days for, well, almost any film with comedy in it, animated or otherwise. It earns its moments. Sure it's emotionally manipulative, but all works of fiction are. That's the point. It's just with the best ones, you don't notice.

Still for all the accolades critics have almost universally heaped upon Pixar, I still think they have room to grow. I don't think they've made a film that matches the limitless inventiveness and bravura display of imagination embodied in Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. But that's a good thing. It gives me something to look forward to.

Movie Recommendation of the Year (So Far, Or At Least Until July 18th)

I'm pretty much in awe of Pixar at this point. Forget the commercial success of their films. In the last decade plus, they've turned out a level of quality cinema that rivals the output of any studio you could mention. They're so far beyond their competitors that it's no longer a competition. I'm speaking not only in terms of story quality but somehow technology as well. Wall-E is the best looking computer-animated film I've ever seen.

A lot of critics have talked about the brilliance of the film's opening act, but this makes it seem as if the movie falls off in the latter parts. It doesn't. Not one iota. Andrew Stanton, the film's writer/director, doesn't sacrifice the poignancy of the early scenes with the ending's unbridled optimism. It felt like a natural conclusion to me. Stanton knows how to craft a tale. He showed that with Finding Nemo and cements it with Wall-E.

Everyone at Pixar knows the key to a great story and that's character development. Every film they make is character driven. Compare this to Dreamworks' most successful franchise: Shrek. The initial Shrek was a character driven story and by far the best of the series. After Shrek, the series devolved into a loose collection of pop culture references and sight gags held together by an extremely thin story. There was no growth of the core characters from one movie to the next. The creators way of expanding the story was to literally add more stock characters. And the result has been an unmemorable (and depressingly high-grossing) series of disposable celluloid candy.

Wall-E is equal parts love story and environmental cautionary tale. Stanton never lets either aspect overpower the other and that keeps the film from being too sentimental or pedantic. The social satire is fairly barbed for a kids' movie, but I loved it for being somewhat daring in that respect. It accomplishes what I think Mike Judge was trying to do with his little-seen film, Idiocracy, a film that had similar ideas and roughly the same message, but went about delivering it in a much more blunt (and subsequently less funny) manner.

Wall-E is the best film released theatrically so far this year. It's also one of the best things Pixar has ever done. I still give Ratatouille the slight edge in that respect. I'm admittedly biased towards Brad Bird, but considering the difficulty of turning a movie that deals with the intricacies of running a restaurant's kitchen into something entertaining to an audience, let alone a predominately child audience, I have to give his project a slightly higher props. Still, Andrew Stanton and his team have crafted a work worthy of Disney or Miyazaki. I can't pay a higher compliment.

P.S.: Sure we could argue about the irony of a movie with a strong environmental/anti-consumerism message being distributed by a company that has reaped tens of billions off of Happy Meal tie-ins and will undoubtedly reap more from sundry promotional knickknacks related to this film, but that'd be no fun.