WALL·E (2008)

WALL·E genuinely is just one of those films I do not understand why it gets all the praise and critical acclaim it does.
WALL·E has a 94 on Metacritic, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, in addition to being nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing at the 81st Academy Awards. The film also topped Time's "Best Movies of the Decade" for crying out loud! (For more, see Wikipedia) 

I have never been able to understand why! For a children’s movie WALL·E was incredibly slow moving and dull to watch. I found the titular character cute, sure, but not to the point where I had  any care or sympathy for him. The same goes for WALL·E’s love interest, EVE. She offered little other than a couple cute moments between the robots mimicking human things and giving a reason for the 3^rd act where the film became the most insufferable.

In the 3^rd act, the filmmakers assumed the audience would care enough about the robots and would be critical of the fat, lazy, humans who allowed the Earth to be destroyed but by this point I just wanted the movie to end! It had failed to make me care about anyone or anything in the film, and as a consequence all the tension of trying to get EVE back and save the Earth fell flat. Even in my summation of this film I realise just how little actually happened in the film despite its length.

I can respect Pixar for wanting to make a social commentary on the dangers of Climate Change, consumerism and corporate greed, especially in a children film exposing kids to these concepts early on in life, but this goal could have been far better achieved in one of Pixar’s shorts. Overall, WALL·E had gorgeous visuals and good intentions, but by no means is WALL·E Pixar’s greatest work nor worth all the accolades it received. 3/5

- James