Scott Likes

A.O. Scott that is. His Wall-E review at the NYT is up, and as the kids are saying, it's dope. Scott makes comparisons to Chaplin and 2001, which I'm hearing a lot. He mentions that it's almost wordless, or if not wordless, almost having no dialogue. So this is the Passion of the Christ of the Pixar canon maybe (though no Aramaic in this one, either). Let's hope it is as successful. Here's some nice sentences from the review.

Wall-E’s tender regard for the material artifacts of a lost civilization is understandable. After all, he too is a product of human ingenuity. And the genius of “Wall-E,” which was directed by the Pixar mainstay Andrew Stanton, who wrote the screenplay with Jim Reardon, lies in its notion that creativity and self-destruction are sides of the same coin. The human species was driven off its home planet — Wall-E eventually learns that we did not die out — by an economy consecrated to the manufacture and consumption of ever more stuff. But some of that stuff turned out to be useful, interesting, and precious. And some of it may even possess something like a soul.

I like that last part - "some of it may even possess something like a soul." Like the Pixar films possess soul? Seriously, don't they? I can't wait to see it. I will be dragging my son to see it, though I will have to forewarn him that there is very little killing in it more than likely. He's a purist, and has been known to veto a story on the sub-par killing criteria alone.

HT to JB.