No movie studio among the ones I’m willing to take the time to research (read: no research) has accomplished what the guys at Pixar have. Simply put: they’ve never made a stinker. Every film they’ve ever made has met with critical, audience, and box office success. Nine movies, nine great movies which nearly everyone has the good sense to love and maybe when no one’s looking, even hug. Pixar’s string of success has been so incredible, so unprecedented that now I find myself wondering: Are we giving them too much credit?
Hold on to your Luxo Jr. shaped pitch forks, don’t roast me over a spit just yet. Hear me out, it’s what Buzz and Woody would want you to do. You’ve got a friend in me! No really. It’s only natural that once someone has so much consistent success that you start to take their greatness as a given. It works the other way around too. Uwe Boll makes crummy movies. Even if you’ve never seen one of them, you instinctively know that. When you hear there’s a new Uwe Boll movie coming out, you automatically assume it’s bad and, even if for some strange reason you went to see one you’d walk in not only expecting it to suck, but perhaps even looking at it through the lens of discovering why it sucks. When you go looking for something, more often than not, you find it. Uwe Boll is Uwe Boll, most people aren’t even going to give anything he does a shot at this point. He’s dismissed out of hand, and perhaps deservedly so.
The same and opposite now seems to be true with Pixar. When Pixar makes a movie, we’ve all learned to assume that, no matter how strange the concept or subpart the trailers (hello Cars) it will not only be good, it’ll probably be one of the best movies you’ve seen all year. When we walk into a Pixar film, we walk in not only expecting something spectacular, but in some cases perhaps, looking for reasons to justify how spectacular we know it must be, without bothering to sit through the whole thing and determine if it deserves that kind of positivity first. In particular with Pixar, I wonder if perhaps this sort of attitude has started influencing critics.
Case in point: WALL-E. WALL-E is a nice little movie and I mean that sincerely. It is also the best reviewed movie of the year. That ought to mean it’s a lot more than simply a nice little movie. But it isn’t. I accept that some people may generally think it’s the best movie of the year. Heck, Cinema Blend’s own Mariana McConnell gave it a shiny 5/5 stars, our first perfect review on the site in 2008. Film is subjective and no matter how great a movie is or how bad, there will always be differing opinions. Yet objectivity aside, making WALL-E the best movie of the year and touting it for best picture feels weirdly out of whack.
It’s not that good is it? It’s a fairly simple film. There aren’t many layers to it. Sure there’s social commentary and romance mixed in with adventure stuff, but none of it’s particularly layered or subtle. It’s intentionally constructed to be as obvious as possible. And it’s short, not just short but maybe even a bit rushed. The movie flies by, it’s barely on screen the 90 minutes required to qualify it as a feature film. On an animation level it’s nice, but compare it to Kung Fu Panda and the action isn’t as exciting and neither the scenery or the film’s relatively few main characters are nearly as visually detailed or breathtaking. WALL-E is smart science fiction, but constructed on the most basic, easy to grasp kids level, sometimes at the expense of explaining the behavior of characters. It’s solid kids entertainment, but not the kind with a stunning amount of complexity or depth. Even its most staunch supporters seem to rate it well below several of Pixar’s other movies. Few would make a case for it being better that Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo or even Ratatouille. Meanwhile audience response on comments sections and in places like our message board has been decidedly mixed. Yet WALL-E, as every Pixar movie is at this point basically pre-ordained to do, is receiving those same, obligatory, amazing, drool-soaked reviews. After being gifted with hit after hit after hit, could critics (whether consciously or unconsciously) be taking it for granted that everything Pixar does is solid gold?
I’m not saying WALL-E isn’t good, I’m just wondering aloud here if instead of gold it might be silver… and if it is silver, then how did we end up in a spot where we’re now forced to place it in the pantheon of animation’s greatest all time films? Pixar, your streak is impressive. Your movies are wonderful. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for you to really screw one up, if only to give us all some sort of obvious reference point. A Bug’s Life doesn’t cut it anymore, a movie that’s merely good won’t do. We’ve all got Pixar blinders on. It would take more than an even a mediocre effort to get us to take them off and treat you objectively again. We need something we can point to and say, “ah yes, this is what it looks like when Pixar screws up.” Pixar needs an All Dogs Go To Heaven 2, just so we can all see where the obvious bottom is, and then work our way up from there. Then as a wise man once said, they can bound, bound, bound and rebound. You can’t bound without a rebound.
Luckily, I have a solution. There’s a filmmaker out there with financing trouble, a guy who loves churning out movies but is guaranteed to deliver the kind of crapper Pixar needs to delineate a proper low point. His name is Uwe Boll. John Lasseter, consider giving him a call. Once you do, we can all get back to praising you, secure in the knowledge that we’d actually notice if Pixar truly did screw one up.
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Editorial-Are-We-Giving-Pixar-Too-Much-Credit-9383.html
