Wall•E sucks / blows.

To understand this review, you need to watch Wall•E first.

I watched Wall•E the other day with ten other people at a movie theatre somewhere near Jalan Dang Wangi. None of those people were below the age of twelve. None looked like PIXAR buffs, either. OK, so I chomped down my regular popcorn and for the first quarter, I am smitten with the Apple references [the iPod, the Mac startup 'chime', the Ping notification sound, how outer space looks like Leopard's desktop background (if that counts as an Apple reference) etc.] and how the animation behaved like it was filmed on a camera [especially with the focuses and aerial shots].

Again, for the first quarter, I cried [but only a little] seeing Wall•E roaming about the junk yard city by itself, doing its own thing by itself. I will definitely go psycho in a world like that. This is the part where the film asks the audience to sympathise [or empathise?] the little robot and settling down to see the way Wall•E does. Then came this... thing called EVE.

While Wall•E had an 'emo' disposition, EVE had the uncomfortable bitchy persona; both equally annoying. I wish the both of them could just cool it. And who said that Wall•E is the masculine character and EVE the feminine one? Just by their names and voices? Show me their reproductive organs! From Wall•E's urge to hold EVE's 'hands', there must be something to follow that, right? No, robots don't / can't fuck, and Wall•E didn't seem to have any porno videos to play on repeat to use as an example. I wonder what would Wall•E feel if it watches porn. Probably destroys itself to discover that it has nothing to call a 'private part'.

When I first saw the teaser trailer for Wall•E, I was really looking forward to... feeling like I received a revelation. Something to change my idea of existence.

I had no feelings for the Captain, nor EVE, nor Wall•E [after the first quarter of the film]. I think the Captain was being really fake about wanting to go back to Earth. He does nothing at all, wants to do nothing at all, and suddenly he wants to make the Earth green again, based on his research of Earth on a very advanced space-age version of Wikipedia?

And those 'humans' aboard Axiom. Living there for 700 years, the spaceship looks too brand-new to me. Wouldn't there be someone, some human, coming out as a renegade and form a rebellion? In real-life, there would be several revolutions within 700 years.

My impression of PIXAR's films went down since Cars was released [I've never seen Ratatouille]. I no longer find the jokes laughable [the sense of humour became less intelligent]. What made me love PIXAR is how they are so clever to animate symbols that represent feelings of light-heartedness, discovery and appreciation for the all the talent in Emeryville in a colourful world seen from a non-human perspective. Only certain parts of the brain can understand something when it is brought to a standard of a child's mind, and that's where their imagination and childish creativity get released and one forgets being an adult, going into a mode where you are in a different life and everything is new and intriguing again [like how kids see the world]. PIXAR does this very well, or rather, did.

Now that PIXAR is 'totally' under Disney [not sure if that includes creative control], their films are having lower standards. The idea for Wall•E came out way back, before PIXAR's first full-length film so this might mean that PIXAR had a really great story for Wall•E, but Disney wants them to be all unoriginal and stay within their guidelines. I guess PIXAR can't go against Disney on that. What a waste of weeks on rendering.

What Wall•E really lacks is a strong, deep story-line. PIXAR's stories always focus on the importance of emotional bond between its characters [like how in Finding Nemo, each character has a special connection with Marlin and Nemo] and how the viewers are able to relate to each character with ease. In Wall•E, there's no real hero; there are two different situations being played simultaneously - the Captain's struggle for controlling the spaceship, and the two lovebirds. I wouldn't cheer for the Captain, I wouldn't cheer for Wall•E.

The only thing that saved this movie is the animation that made everything looked more than realistic. If you take the basic story and replace the robots and spaceships with humans and normal geographical conditions on Earth, it would probably turn out to be an old-fashion Bollywood movie.

I think the most well-made PIXAR film is The Incredibles and Toy Story 2. While all of them [pre-Cars] I would give at least 8 stars out of 10, Wall•E deserves a mediocre 6.8/10.