WALL-E

Okay, so I leave THE INCREDIBLE HULK with the sound of explosions in my ears (and chest, it was a "good" sound system) and images of cars being crushed and split in half and human "collateral damage" flying through the air or being crushed etc. and the sense that I've seen all this before, repeatedly.

Then yesterday my ten-year-old and his nephew, my grandson, and I go see the new Pixar flick, WALL-E, and I leave that film unable to stop noticing how many overweight people there are in my town, despite the hip ex-New Yorkers jogging in the park with their kids in jogging strollers and generally not anywhere near as overweight a population as a lot of other towns in this country, or now around the world, thanks to our junk food and processed food and etc. becoming global.

Pretty daring for a G rated kids animated movie, cartoon essentially, to indict the lifestyle of a majority of its audience. In fact, damn near revolutionary in terms of what a full length "cartoon" might be able to do. And aesthetically, you've probably already heard about the risks it takes, since the first twenty minutes or more of the film is pretty much silent, except for the soundtrack (and old movie clips), and in fact is an obvious homage to the great silent film comedy stars and their film acting and film making techniques.

How come all the Hollywood talent assembled for these comic book super hero movies can't come up with anything that new or deep, despite the simplistic rip offs of Greek tragic motifs, and this animated kids movie can?

The way I hear it, it's because Pixar is still being run like an independent studio, despite Disney having bought it, and in fact like a very small independent studio where the creative talent runs the show. In this case most of it was the writer/director, Andrew Stanton.

Not that there isn't predictable "plot points" (as the screenwriting courses call them) or familiar heart-tugging or smile-inducing kid movie moments, but even those occur in a context that is original and so are beyond most kid movies, and adult movies these days—no dependence on bathroom humor or gross out imagery or computer generated pyrotechnics.

Just great story telling with a subversive message done uniquely. Just think about it, for my very adult taste and sensibility, a G rated kids full length cartoon is the most creatively and contextually original movie I've seen in ages.

It gives you hope, I mean me hope. Check it out and see what it does for you (the opening Pixar short cartoon, an homage to classic short pre-show cartoons of my childhood, is also a treat).