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fancycwabsToday while I was at work I read that there would be a sneak preview of Wall-E at the Paradiso, and if you put your name in on the local TV News contest page you had a chance of winning some tickets. The contest had, alas, expired, but since the theater is on the way home, I thought I'd stop by and see if someone had a spare (normally they give out lots of those suckers, and there are tons more tickets handed out than people showing up to see the movie).
I was in luck.
The Paradiso kinda prides itself on approaching the state of the art as far as projection technology goes, which is to say that they couldn't get the film started until 15 minutes after showtime because they didn't have the right password. In an ordinary movie, those fifteen minutes would have been taken up by commercials for Coke and Today's Army and American Express and half a dozen trailers, so it was pretty much a normal start.
The short, Presto, is a delightful piece of cartoon slapstick in the Warner Brothers vein, involving a magician and his hungry rabbit. It could very well be the best Pixar short ever, especially in terms of timing and cleverness.
Pixar movies (save those by Brad Bird) tend to follow a certain formula. Imperfect but acceptable lifestyle is thrown into chaos by the addition or removal of an element, and characters must go on a quest so that order may be reestablished. During the course of the quest, the imperfections of the previous lifestyle are eliminated, and the regained order has those previous imperfections eliminated, or at least under control. Wall-E follows that formula to a large extent, but it happens on a grander and a smaller scale than in other efforts.
The basic plot synopsis you can get from watching the trailer. Boy and girl meet cute, boy follows girl into space, hijincks ensue. There are some very sweet moments early on as Wall-E and Eve get to know one another, and you get a glimmer of Wall-E's take on romance charted innocently enough by his love of one particular movie musical (musical theatre types already know which musical from the post title, but if you don't actually know the show and you happen to be looking the other way when the videotape goes into the player, you may have no idea which musical it is). There's a fairly significant two-tiered science-fiction backdrop (I won't go into details, as this bit is of more than casual importance and not really covered by the trailers), and visuals that push the boundaries of technology (just like every other Pixar movie).
Great? Yes. Perfect? No. While it's a wonderful movie (and certainly better than anything else I've seen this year), it lacks the attention to detail that graced Ratatouille or the pure visceral thrill of The Incredibles. But among those Pixar films that don't have a visionary at the helm, it's a standout. And it's not like you're not going to see it anyway.
In short: Presto reaches the pinnacle of Pixar shorts, Wall-E reaches for it, but doesn't quite make the standard of The Incredibles or Ratatouille, which is to say it's better than anything else you might want to see at a movie theatre this weekend by far.
I was in luck.
The Paradiso kinda prides itself on approaching the state of the art as far as projection technology goes, which is to say that they couldn't get the film started until 15 minutes after showtime because they didn't have the right password. In an ordinary movie, those fifteen minutes would have been taken up by commercials for Coke and Today's Army and American Express and half a dozen trailers, so it was pretty much a normal start.
The short, Presto, is a delightful piece of cartoon slapstick in the Warner Brothers vein, involving a magician and his hungry rabbit. It could very well be the best Pixar short ever, especially in terms of timing and cleverness.
Pixar movies (save those by Brad Bird) tend to follow a certain formula. Imperfect but acceptable lifestyle is thrown into chaos by the addition or removal of an element, and characters must go on a quest so that order may be reestablished. During the course of the quest, the imperfections of the previous lifestyle are eliminated, and the regained order has those previous imperfections eliminated, or at least under control. Wall-E follows that formula to a large extent, but it happens on a grander and a smaller scale than in other efforts.
The basic plot synopsis you can get from watching the trailer. Boy and girl meet cute, boy follows girl into space, hijincks ensue. There are some very sweet moments early on as Wall-E and Eve get to know one another, and you get a glimmer of Wall-E's take on romance charted innocently enough by his love of one particular movie musical (musical theatre types already know which musical from the post title, but if you don't actually know the show and you happen to be looking the other way when the videotape goes into the player, you may have no idea which musical it is). There's a fairly significant two-tiered science-fiction backdrop (I won't go into details, as this bit is of more than casual importance and not really covered by the trailers), and visuals that push the boundaries of technology (just like every other Pixar movie).
Great? Yes. Perfect? No. While it's a wonderful movie (and certainly better than anything else I've seen this year), it lacks the attention to detail that graced Ratatouille or the pure visceral thrill of The Incredibles. But among those Pixar films that don't have a visionary at the helm, it's a standout. And it's not like you're not going to see it anyway.
In short: Presto reaches the pinnacle of Pixar shorts, Wall-E reaches for it, but doesn't quite make the standard of The Incredibles or Ratatouille, which is to say it's better than anything else you might want to see at a movie theatre this weekend by far.
