Great post Bob.

Saw it yesterday with my 2 & 4 year old. It was the first movie I took the 2 year old too, and it was a bit boring for her. I had to stand near the exit with her during the third act because she was getting antsy and vocal.

Despite that, I loved it, and can't believe anyone couldn't. Then of course, this is DVDtalk. Somebody finds something heavy-handed in everything on these boards.

Anyway, I loved Jeff Garlin. He is welcome in any future Pixar projects, IMO. Perfectly cast, much like every other Pixar film. I also loved Eve's voice. Cute, stern and innocent all rolled into one. As some mentioned, I was also not a fan of real humans in the film, especially since there ended up being animated humans later on. I love how there is also complaining about the 2001 theme. Seriously? If that is as close to a pop culture reference we get in our Pixar films, color me satisfied. I thought it was funny as hell.

Presto was equally amazing. For me it was more reminiscent of Warner and Looney Tunes than Disney. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just throwing it out there.

The purpose, I think, of using real humans for the vids was to show how much humans have changed physically since being in space. If you notice, in the captain's quarters, there's a series of pictures of all the ship captains, ranging from a full human and moving slowly to a fully animated picture of the current captain. It was meant to highlight the difference between more active humans and the completely lazy ones.

I am 5'9" and I stay under 160 lbs. Every night I ride a half hour on a semi-recumbent bicycle. It's not a slow, lazy ride either. I walk a lot during the day. I don't think that's bad for a 61 year old.

I'm getting into this a bit late, but wanted to say that I took it a different way ..



The thing that really impressed me was how much emotion was shown from Wall-E and Eve with only "eyes" and head movements.

I don't think the film believes this.
I think this is not incompatible with what the film believes.
I think the film believes this.
I am quite certain the film believes this, and that it is in fact the essence of the movie.

It really seems like the film agrees with you more than you seem to acknowledge.

I know this will never stay like this, but Wall-E is currently #9 on the IMDB Top 250: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/

Saw this Sunday afternoon and really enjoyed it. I loved that most of the "dialogue" wasn't really spoken. Presto was great, probably my new favorite among the Pixar shorts.

But, my big question is this: WHERE ARE THE WALL-E TOYS????? I walked into Wal-Mart to grab an E.V.E and Wall-E, but there was nothing..same story at Target. Seems Toys R Us has the exclusive...why, why why???

Let's say for the sake of argument I concede every one of your points. You really believe that

I saw a big skid of Wall-Es at Sam's yesterday.

They obviously wanted to use the Hello, Dolly! footage, too; I imagine it would have been even more jarring to have that be the only footage featuring live-action people.

But yeah, it works nicely thematically that the only signs of real humanity we have throughout most of the film are recordings of people being people, and a rusty little 'bot.

Well, awesome... I was rereading what I wrote and decided to edit it out. You beat me to the punch. Oh.. and I'm 5' 10" at 190 and am trying to get down to 175. I couldn't imagine 160.

I used to be 5'10" but I've shrunk. Really. Old people really do shrink.

I refer you to my points number 2 and 3 above:

I think you would be smart enough to not be convinced. I think there'd be a few others.

No, I don't--and more to the point (again), I don't think WALL-E does, either.

It's fair to say I won't be around a few hundred years from now.

How many of you are old enough to remember the classic Zager and Evans' tune 'In the Year 2525'?
That's what I kept thinking about during the second half of the film, especially these lyrics from the song:
"In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine, doing that for you".
I wonder if Andrew Stanton was familiar with the song and somehow, maybe subconciously, incorporated those thoughts into the artistic concept of the film's humans?

He probably had the internet access commercial playing in the background (In the year 2525, internet access was still $24.95, in the blah blah blah. Ad has been going for like 3 years now)

That song came out in 1969. In 1965, there was...

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The idea of human physicality declining because of automation is pretty ancient and has been used to explain the debilitated appearance of aliens in science fiction for almost a century. The idea also came from the fact that Roman citizens had most of their chores done by slaves and became so decadent, the control of their armies and the Empire gradually shifted to the East (to the Dacians, ancestors of today's Romanians).

Well, to each their own, but I thought WALL-E was perhaps the weakest Pixar effort to date.

I loved the first half hour or so -- right up until humans are brought back into the fold. At that point, I felt like the movie completely derailed into an unfocused mess. The theater that had been laughing up until that point fell quiet for the remainder of the film. At the first sign of the credits, everyone hurried out just as quietly as they'd been sitting. No applause. No enthusiastic chatter. Nothing. Even my 8-year-old son, who was rollicking during the first third, said it was "okay."

I wasn't a big fan of RATATOUILLE, but that film's a masterpiece compared to this. For the life of me, I can't understand what others are raving about, but I'm definitely not alone with my feelings on this one.

Anyway, just my two cents.

Liked the movie overall...but have to agree with some points that once WALL-E gets to the humans something is missing from the movie. For me it's the lack of motivation in the story for the humans to return to Earth...they aren't suffering on the space cruise ship besides a tad bit of boredom on the captains part, the passengers are all fat, dumb, and happy (figurative and literally). They are in no danger, and there is no pressing need for them to go to Earth which I thought would be the story line. The only motivation for them to return to Earth is 'because they are supposed to'.

Plus the humans/robots were still generating huge amounts of garbage on the cruise ship and dumping it, they had obviously not 'evolved' on their recycling capabilities/habits...how were they going to clean up the Earth ??

Also there was a bit of overload on the various robots on the ship, would have liked to have seen some more character development with fewer robots...example is the hyper robot that beats up all the security robots...it may have been in the repair ward, but to me it just all the sudden beats them all up out of nowhere to get them out of the jam.

It's always weird to me how reactions in theaters vary. Because I've read a few people saying their theater was silent throughout most of the film - while others have spoken of "rounds of applause" and so on and so forth.

Personally, the audience in the theater I saw it in laughed throughout (there were a few periods of silence, mainly near the end) - and many applauded at the end. Lots of excited chatter and all that. And about a quarter of the audience stayed through the credits - which is rare, in my experience.

Mind you, the reactions of the audience mean nothing to me (not that I think you were suggesting that they should) - I've enjoyed lots of films that most of the audience seemed to hate, while I've been bored by films that the audience seemed to love. In this case, however, I happened to agree with the audience I saw it with.

Anyways, not a lot of point to this. I've just always found it a little strange how much audience reactions can differ, even among opening weekend audiences.

Was there a scene after the credits?

If so, what happened?

Sorta, but you didn't really miss out.


That's it.

I've heard it's just the