Preview of Movie Review: "Wall-E"

I went to see the Disney/Pixar film "Wall-E" Saturday afternoon with Alessandra, Ladybird, Foxtrot, and the Cine-Sib.

First impressions:

• The preceding short Pixar film about a magician and his rabbit was absolutely delightful.
• The trailers of forthcoming movies, though, were lackluster and even repulsive. The nauseating trailer full of singing, dancing chihuahua dogs made me want to poke my eyes out to halt the agony. MAKE IT STOP!
  
• The visual quality of the actual "Wall-E" movie is stunning. It's astonishing, really. Pixar's characteristic wizardry with computer-generated animation remains unparalleled as it produces ever more beautiful and detailed images.
  
• The first half of the movie is better than the second.
• The best thing about the movie is the romance between the robots Wall-E and Eve.
• Eve's development as a character is a splendid achievement.
  
• The ecological aspects (and apparent critique of consumerism and big corporations) occasionally annoyed me. I don't like being emotionally manipulated. Nor did I like the depiction of human beings as a uniform lot of brainless lardbutts.
• Sci-fi fans will enjoy a few clever in-jokes and references.
  
• Overall, I'd say the movie was beautiful and often cute, but it wasn't really FUN.
  
• Low replay value IMHO. Frankly, I got bored. I won't be saying in the future, "Hey, let's just pop 'Wall-E' into the DVD player for fun while I grade papers." (That's the sort of thing I do with my favorite Pixar films "Toy Story 2" and "The Incredibles.")
• Is it just me, or did Eve look like she was manufactured by the same people who make Macs and iPods and such? She was just so . . . sleek and smooth and Apple-like.

I'll have a real movie review online later.

UPDATE: The Cinema-Mad Sibling has a haiku review of this film.