B.W. At The Movies: WALL•E

A charming, often hilarious dystopian science-fiction tale about Earth filled with garbage and grossly deteriorated humans finding their way back home after centuries of allowing themselves to devolve into machine-dependent blobs?

Hey, why not? Pixar is now affiliated with the same studio that made a charming, often hilarious cartoon adapted from a book about a baby deer who learns that humans will shoot your mother and your best friend without a second thought.

I must say that the only reason I didn't completely lose my head over how terrific a movie WALL•E is, is that the hype and reviews for this are so overwrought ("Greatest American film this year!!!!") that I walked in fighting the expectation that this could be one of the best movies I've ever seen. That said, hey, it's a terrific movie. Find the most glowing review of it you can find and take my word for it, it's true. I laughed, I cried, I did all of the things that the moviemakers wanted me to do. I was helpless for 97 minutes. It's great.

And then I spent the weekend driving Sweetie crazy by occasionally stopping what I was doing and saying "Wallllll-eeeeee" in various emotional pitches. Every so often I'd throw in an "Eeeeee-vaaaaaah" just for variety's sake. It's an infectious film.

BUT. It was not even the best movie on the screen. The short flick Presto had me laughing harder than the first time I saw the first five minutes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? And I didn't think I'd ever laugh that hard again. Brilliant.

I don't know what's in the water at Pixar, but they consistently churn out above and beyond the most entertaining movies being made in this day and age. They've hit some clunkers (I didn't get Cars at all), but when they're on, they don't just hit home runs, they knock 'em into the next county.