Colette and I went down to Baywalk to watch Wall•E last night. It’s become sort of a tradition that we do date nights to go watch Pixar movies. We did that with Cars, Ratatouille, and now this one. We both thoroughly enjoyed it, even though we almost missed the short at the beginning thanks to a dumbass barista at Starbucks that forgot to start making Colette’s drink until we were standing there for 10 minutes. Why does Starbucks always insist on making you call things by stupid names?

Anyways, back to Wall•E.

First some technical stuff:

The cinematography, or I guess virtual cinematography, in this movie is absolutely ridiculous. Andrew Stanton has said that they spent lots of time trying to add in the small imperfections that you’d see using real lenses and hardware, since everything that’s animated by a computer is procedurally flawless. They hired people to create realistic lens flare, simulate depth of field, and refine barrel distortion. Sound design also shines, with Ben Burtt of Star Wars fame creating all of the robotey, computerey noises, as well as some voices. There’s a stunning amount of personality and depth to every character on screen with almost no spoken lines in the entire movie.

Now for the story:

Wall•E is the best movie I’ve seen yet in 2008. The Pixar folks have been one-upping themselves each time they’ve put out a new film since Finding Nemo (with the unfortunate exception of Cars). The plot in Wall•E, although a fairly simple story about a robot falling in love, is full of so much nuance that most young children would never understand, like many Pixar movies. Or maybe I’m wrong about kids these days, which would be cool.

It’s packed with social commentary about our throwaway society and about people gradually becoming more and more lazy, ignorant, and apathetic to everything around them. And it’s hilarious. The first time they showed one of the humans on the spaceship all fat and flying around in a wheelchair that provides everything they need, I was laughing my ass off. I couldn’t believe they went to that level to make a point, but it turns out that Wall•E was one of the most effective examples of environmentalism I’ve ever seen, at least in terms of me actually listening to its preaching and being affected by it. Most pieces about global warming, pollution, recycling, etc. are never really that convincing to me. I end up just trying to poke holes in their arguments simply because of how they’re presented. Wall•E made me want to listen.

And if you don’t get misty by the end of the movie, you’re not human.