{"id":803,"date":"2008-06-21T07:51:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-21T07:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/walle-continues-to-get-mixed-buzz\/"},"modified":"2008-06-21T07:51:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-21T07:51:00","slug":"walle-continues-to-get-mixed-buzz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/walle-continues-to-get-mixed-buzz.html","title":{"rendered":"WALL*E continues to get mixed buzz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
A lot of videos for WALL*E<\/a><\/i> \u2014 and for Presto<\/i>, the short film that plays before it \u2014 have been popping up online in the last few days, but I\u2019ve been avoiding them, since the movie opens six days from now and I want to watch it relatively fresh.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I cannot help but note that, while everyone seems to love the character<\/i> WALL*E, early reaction to the film WALL*E<\/i> has been a little more \u2026 mixed.<\/p>\n

Oh, sure, Harry Knowles<\/a> has been his usual orgasmic self, declaring the film not only the best thing that Pixar has ever done but the best thing that Disney<\/i> has ever done, etc., etc. But others have been a bit more, shall we say, reserved.<\/p>\n

Dirty Harry<\/a>, formerly of Libertas, gives the film 2.5 stars out of 4, and he takes exception to a dig the film takes at President Bush, as is his wont \u2014 but he has issues with the story, too:<\/p>\n

The first forty-minutes are magical. The introduction to Wall-E and slow reveals of his routine and world are mesmerizing and almost completely without dialogue. Eve\u2019s arrival, their courtship, and those first moments in outer space are equally wondrous. It\u2019s only when we get inside of the ship and meet the human beings that things become routine in that frantic kind of way that hopes to cover for a lack of any real story.<\/p>\n

The human characters (and robot supporting characters) are terribly underdeveloped. Much of the latter part of the second-act is spent with the ship\u2019s captain, voiced by Jeff Garlin, but he\u2019s flat, only there to move the plot along. As the plot turns towards the fate of the human characters, Wall-E and Eve are left to chase the Maguffin with a cast of \u201cwhacky\u201d robots. Eventually this results in third-act numbness and you just bide your time until it\u2019s over.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, my CT Movies editor Mark Moring included a brief note about the film in his newsletter<\/a> yesterday:<\/p>\n

On another note, the other day I saw one of the films I was most looking forward to all year\u2014Wall*E<\/i>, the latest from the creative geniuses at Pixar. I\u2019ll say this much: Pixar hasn\u2019t skipped a beat, and it\u2019s a very good movie from writer\/director Andrew Stanton\u2014though not as good, I would say, as his last film, Finding Nemo<\/a><\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finally, another colleague of mine who was on the same junket as Dirty Harry reports that there was \u201cno uniform opinion emerging from the press corps\u201d and he doubts the film will get the kind of love from critics that Ratatouille<\/a><\/i> got. He also writes:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure, though, that I\u2019ve never before heard journalists talk about being concerned about reader backlash for writing a less-than-glowing review. Has Pixar become sacred?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I guess we\u2019ll find out when the film opens next week, and then when we see what kind of legs it has in the weeks that follow.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, my colleague also finds it \u201coffensive\u201d that the film has been given such a massive merchandising campaign; the junket even had a \u201cMerchandising Suite\u201d where journalists had to listen to a marketing pitch before they could pick up their swag. This movie is, remember, set in the future and based on the idea that rampant consumerism has destroyed the planet.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of videos for WALL*E \u2014 and for Presto, the short film that plays before it \u2014 have been popping up online in the last few days, but I\u2019ve been avoiding them, since the movie opens six days from now and I want to watch it relatively fresh. However, I cannot help but note […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWALL*E continues to get mixed buzz<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A lot of videos for WALL*E -- and for Presto, the short film that plays before it -- have been popping up online in the last few days, but I've been\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/walle-continues-to-get-mixed-buzz.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"WALL*E continues to get mixed buzz\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A lot of videos for WALL*E -- and for Presto, the short film that plays before it -- have been popping up online in the last few days, but I've been\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/walle-continues-to-get-mixed-buzz.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-06-21T07:51:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_MwnH1kpbPRM\/SF0VV-KlN3I\/AAAAAAAABqs\/MFF9MIx5Mpo\/s400\/wall-e-console.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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