Wall-E (A) It's taken as an article of faith that large corporations care only about maximizing profits at the expense of everything else. It's kinda true-note the recent troubles in the banking community, for example. But it's not actually true. Starbucks, for instance, is frickin' everywhere, but they make good coffee. And Walt Disney cranks out a lot of product for kids that seems designed to insult them-as the trailers before Wall-E indicated-but they do have the smarts to leave Pixar alone to do their thing.
Which is kind of ironic, considering the subtext in Pixar's Wall-E is the idea that large corporations don't always have the consumer's best interests as their primary concern. The storyline being that a Wal-Mart-like mega-company called 'Buy-N-Large' has assumed control of the whole world, made it too cluttered to live in, and built giant spaceships for the population to live on while robots tidy up back home. The problem being that, after 800 years, the planet is apparently still too dirty for the humans to return to, and also, after 800 years of having their every need catered to by robots, humans have become unmotivated slugs who move around on recliners whilst sipping pizza from a cup.
This is all just a backdrop for the main story, which is about two different robots who meet and fall in love. And Pixar pulls it off beautifully. Since the main characters don't speak, in a conventional sense, the story has to unfold through visuals, which is what animation as a genre is best at. (There's an extended scene where Wall-E and EVE cavort around the outside of the giant spaceship like Astaire and Rogers.) Notice how, through Wall-E's actions, and how he reacts to the world around him, we learn all we need to know about him in the first fifteen minutes of the film. Notice how EVE acts, and how she reacts to Wall-E and his world, and how we've got two different personalities who meet and hit it off.
Now consider that there's virtually no dialogue between them for the whole movie. I understand sound designer Ben Burtt was given dialogue by the screenwriters which he 'translated' into robot-speak for the movie. The performances of all the robots in the film, in fact, are wonderfully nuanced. Notice how the little scrubbing robot spends his time chasing Wall-E down with an air of growing frustration. When he catches up with Wall-e, he scrubs away at him with an especial glee.
The only quibble I have is the use of live-action actors in certain bits, which tends to throw one out of the movie. I suppose you could say it reinforces the difference between the humans when they left Earth, and the slug-like creatures they've grown into, but it's not that necessary. (There's a neat little visual gag in the captain's cabin showing the previous captains of the ship, each more obese then their predecessor...)
Getting back to my earlier statement about mega companies, I notice a lot of people on the 'net seem to be trying to make Wall-E out to be 'Idiotcrasy Jr.' Which really isn't the case, here, folks. The underlying message in the subtext isn't, "If you place your faith in a soulless consumer culture, you'll be a fatty Mcfatterson." but, 'If you want a better life, the amount of effort you put into it will pay off in ways that'll surprise you.' Which isn't a bad message for a kid's movie, actually...
(Oh, crap! While I'm here, I might want to point out the utter futility of trying to convince kids to see a Disney or Dreamworks animated film by putting their trailers before a Pixar film. It's like putting a McDonald's poster near the entrance to Thomas Keller's French Laundry restaurant. In my case, I tuned out after the first five seconds of the 'Madagascar 2' trailer, and by the time Pixar's short, 'Presto' came up, I couldn't tell you what the other trailers were for. Wait- I think they were for Disney's 'Bolt' which is what I guess the people who couldn't get on at Pixar but had too much self-respect to work at Dreamworks have to do and 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua', which is the entertainment equivalent of Child Abuse. Seriously, if you made a kid see that, the theater staff should call Child Services and have you arrested...)
Harold And Kumar Fulfill a Contractual Obligation (D-) Not much to say, really. The first movie worked because underneath all the pot humor, there was an undercurrent of anxiety about growing up non-white in America. The trouble was, once that point was made, there's not a whole lot else you could do with the characters. As a result, this movie doesn't have a lot going on besides dragging Harold and Kumar from gross-out gag to gross-out gag. There's a sub-plot about Kumar trying to get to his college girlfriend's wedding to stop it, but given the way the Kumar character behaves like a clueless, selfish dolt, it's hard to see why Harold's still friends with him, let alone why his ex-girlfriend would want to have anything to do with him. And trying to sell George Dubya as a goofily affable frat boy doesn't float with me. He's probably more like the petty, mean-spirited Rob Corddry Homeland Security character, in the context of this film. The return of Neil Patrick Harris-tripping on 'shrooms and riding a unicorn, no less- is the only reason this movie doesn't get an 'F' from me.
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