Wall*E

Pixar started out by giving inanimate objects life, such as in the iconic short Luxo Jr. Now although robots are not exactly inanimate, an interesting decision was made to not give them human voices as is done in most other films using robot characters.

Although at first this seemed a bit odd, I (along with many other people) thought that if anyone could pull that off, it would be Pixar.

And pull it off they do. The characters a engaging, charming and far more captivating than those of Cars for instance.

It's still not up to the standards of Toy Story, but I thought it was a bloody good film.

Wall*E - 8/10

Kung Fu Panda

Dull, Boring, not very funny, a couple of clever sequences and the animation's pretty good in certain parts.

That's about it really. They're making a sequel tho.. yay.

Kung Fu Panda - 3/10

Ratatouille

So what does Brad Bird follow up the incredible Incredibles (sorry) with?? A story about a rat that cooks..... yep.

Surprisingly, it's actually pretty good! I wasn't expecting to like this, it looked...well... a bit shite in the trailers, but I was really entertained (and after watching Cars, I needed to be!!)

Ratatouille steers back towards a more Disney-esque type of story, with the human/animal interaction and human/animal characters, it feels like a much more "traditional" animated film.

Set in France, Remy the rat has a passion for food and finds his way to a restaurant and a hopeless young man Linguini, cue various culinary adventures and slapstick. It IS a pretty standard story, but it's charming, funny and is brilliantly directed by Brad Bird (& co).

Lifted, this one's accompanying short, is AWESOME!

Ratatouille - 8/10
Lifted - 9/10

Cars

Pixar are one of the best animation studios out there at the moment, but every studio has to have at least one duff film every now and again.

A good friend of mine commented that a lot of people don't like Cars, but that it's not bad and at the end of the day it's "Pixars least awesome movie", which says a lot for Pixar!!

I agree that it's their worst movie so far, I disagree that it's still awesome though, because it isn't.

The opening race scenes look fantastic, they really captured the energy and style that you'd expect from a NASCAR film, (NB: Actual NASCAR is BOOOOORRRRIIING! from what I've seen at least) but that energy soon dissipates once the track stuff's done with.

Basically Lightning McQueen (blandly voiced by Owen Wilson) gets lost out in the desert and ends up in the forgotten town of Radiator Springs on the famed Route 66. On the way he has to learn a little humility and all that schmaltzy stuff.

The problem is, apart from it being long, slow and boring, is that I didn't and couldn't engage with any of the characters. None of them did anything for me, I just didn't care. Maybe because they're all too similar? Sure they're all various different cars, but they're just cars, all a box on wheels, and there's not a huge amount you can do on a body language front there, so they have to rely more on their voice talent, which doesn't stand out here.

The accompanying short One Man Band, was a hell of a lot more entertaining than the feature presentation!! Which is a shame.

Cars - 5/10

One Man Band - 8/10

Enchanted

Finally persuaded the girlfriend to watch this with me (how much of that sentence is wrong?), mainly thanks to Blockbuster's current deal on renting family movies for 50p! Bonanza!

The film starts off animated before a series of events transports the characters to the real world, this is where the film takes off, using the 'fish out of water' device, the Disney characters stumble around the real world, occasionally breaking into song (or not as the case my be).

At first I found Giselle to be incredibly INCREDIBLY annoying, thankfully, things were toned down a tad and I made it through!

It's funny, charming and inventive. Even the girlfriend liked it.


Enchanted - 7/10

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs

Let us all remember that The Simpsons Movie was pretty SHITE! Futurama, (which I've always preferred) however, does a much better job of sustaining the running time.

It does lag a little in place, only a little though, and mainly because of the concurrent plot lines used to sustain the 90 minutes, but by the end of it, it felt like I had just watched an episode rather than sat through an overly long cartoon.

If you know Futurama, there's nothing really new here, but it does the job pretty well and I laughed a fair bit throughout, definitely worth watching.


Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs - 7/10

Batman: Gotham Knight

An interesting one this, what is essentially an animated prologue to The Dark Knight (no spoilers in it afaik), there's several short stories, all slightly different styles, all slightly different animation/art styles, but all with a common thread.

The animation is pretty Anime-esque, slightly heightened from Batman: The Animated Series (which stands as one of the best cartoons out there), the stories are written by various writers including David S. Goyer, Josh Olsen and Brian Azzarello.

While it's good, it doesn't quite have the tension or action levels to compete with the movie versions, not that it's trying to 'compete' per se, that was a bad choice of words, but it struggled to keep me totally engaged at times.

Essentially though it's pretty well done and a nice bridge between Begins and TDK.

Batman: Gotham Knight - 7/10

Horton Hears a Who!

To be honest, I didn't think this was going to be any good, CGI movies that aren't from Pixar, generally inspire that knee jerk reaction.

I was wrong, a bit slow in places with a bit of a heavy handed message, but overall a really entertaining and heartwarming movie.

On the CG front, it's a bit of and odd one, it opens with a pretty much photo-realistic shot of rain drops on a leaf, then becomes very cartoony, ditching any sort of realism on any elements. No while I have absolutely no problem with this, after all it's an animated family film, it just made me wonder why they bothered at the start, maybe just to show that they could??

At the other end of the scale is a brilliant Anime segment in the midst of Horton's trek.

So, all in all an unexpectedly great animated movie!

Horton Hears a Who! - 8/10

The Invincible Iron Man

If the Iron Man film was a cartoon, set in China and not as good, then it would be pretty close to this.

For a part it follows a very similar plot line, indeed even some scenes are pretty close to the movie, I'm going to hazard a guess that they're common across the origin story variations in the comics too. But then there's this whole other super natural thing with a Chinese Mandarin and his elemental warriors, wait, that's it!...

If the Iron Man film, was a cartoon, set in China, not as good and basically Iron Man meets Big Trouble in Little China, then it would be pretty close to this. (Although Big Trouble.. is better ;)

I'm guessing seeing the movie before this didn't help, but then I've only watched this because of seeing the movie and I probably won't go out of my way to watch any more Iron Man stuff until Iron Man 2.

If you're into Iron Man, then it's probably worth a watch, casual viewers, maybe not so much.

The Invincible Iron Man - 5/10

Hellboy Animated: Blood & Iron

Apparently this is the second full length Hellboy Animated, the first being Sword of Storms, that I have yet to see and apparently isn't as good, but I'll find out at some point.

The animated version of big red uses the voices of most of the same actors from the movie, notably Ron Pearlman and Selma Blair, the actual animation doesn't have quite the same atmosphere as the comics, but does a pretty good job, bear in mind a lot of what's in the comics is just black.

We have a mix of a non-traditional vampire story, mixed with some good old fashioned god bashing and a Memento style flashback sequence showing the background to the vampire story and Professor Broom's first adventure.

Basically it works really well, the pace lacks occasionally but overall, it's Hellboy through and through, perfectly capturing the spirit of the comics and as in the live action (which took me a couple of viewings to come around to) Ron Pearlman IS Hellboy.

Hellboy Animated: Blood & Iron - 8/10

Flushed Away

While Flushed Away didn't receive a lot of acclaim when it was released and many felt that the CGI characters don't capture the same sort of atmosphere or charm as their claymation counterparts, it's still a very entertaining and humorous film.

It follows Roddy, a pet rat, who gets flushed down a toilet and ends up in the sewer, discovers some new friends and blah blah blah etc. The usual stuff.

The real stars of the show are the many slugs that loiter around, Le Frog and is Hench Frogs and Whitey. The main characters are fine enough but at the end of the day the background stuff is far more entertaining.

Flushed Away - 8/10

Ice Age: The Meltdown

Don't watch a CGI (digimation or whatver you want to call it) film thinking it's going to be as good as a classic Pixar, it's not. Not even the recent Pixars are as good.

IA: TMD has only a vague narrative (Mark Kermode described it as "the death of narrative cinema"), but at the end of the day, it's some pre-historic animals making their way down a valley to escape an impending flood. That's it, does it need anything else? No. It's got some basic character development for some of the main protagonists and some actually quite dark moments and some comic genius at times.

What it's not is Toy Story, what Ice Age: The Meltdown is, is a heartwarming and very entertaining flick.

"I think I coughed up my spleen"

Ice Age: The Meltdown - 7/10

(Next up The Da Vinci Code, cheers mum's Sky Movies premier, cos that means I don't have to pay for it.)

Transformers: The Movie

Oh good lord was this rubbish. It's been sat in my DVD collection for a couple of years, un-watched, mainly as we used it in the display DVD player at Gadgetshop, I think it was left there by someone and I swiped it when the whole business went kaput, I'm not really a fan so I've never really watched it, until now.

Why? Because last night I went and saw the new Michael Bay version (next review) of Transformers, so this morning I thought I'd watch the old cartoon movie to compare (I'll mention that in the other article).

It's around 85 mins...at about 60 mins or so I started typing up my thoughts on The Proposition, that's how engaging it is. I tried, I really did, but it was just too shite for me to keep a full eye on, I watched it all the way through, with MacBook on lap (eyes up, eyes down.. etc). It's rubbish, really bad, dated, crappy writing, none to special animation and plot wise, just a whole bunch of stuff, involving Galactus...sorry Unicron eating planets and most of the original G1 Transformers getting killed or changed.

I vaguely remember watching Transformers the series when I was younger, I had a couple of toys (Blitzwing for example) but none of the really major ones, so it's not really a big part of my life and the movie certainly didn't stir any fond memories that's for sure!

Transformers: The Movie - 2/10

The Simpsons Movie

I won't start this with the almost obligatory 'DOH!', I won't sink to that level...DOH! (damn.)

The Simpsons are massive, one of the longest running series on telly, Homer's probably of at least equal fame to Jesus or even Michael Jackson!

A big screen outing for them has been a long time coming ,talked about, rumored, now done. At 87 minutes they keep it at a sensible length...if only it felt like it.

I don't recall any film where I've nearly nodded off in the cinema, not even 102 Dalmations, The Simpsons Movie is just plain boring.

If you've seen the trailers, you've seen nearly all the funny bits, there are a couple more but really only a couple, some of the jokes are, as expected as it happens with all TV-to-movie formats, are directly lifted from the TV show.

The plot is suitably Simpsons-esque, no real deviation from their usual formulas, just making it longer, Homer's mis-judgement results in Springfield being practically destroyed and he needs to rectify it whilst restoring his family's faith in him, you've seen this sort of thing before, but not on this scale.

The animation seems much more Futurama like, lots more use of computers to help with the parallax and faux 3D, but that's just the natural progression of things, however on the subject of Futurama, I got about 3/4 of the way through the film and started wondering how much better a Futurama movie would be, at least they could go full on space epic with it.

The Simpsons has always been one to satirise, that's the point in the programme, and boy to the do it in this, taking, not-so-subtle swipes at the US government every few sentences and a bit of a jab here and there at Al Gore and the environmentalists (band name anyone). And there seems also to be a rather homo-phobic side to the movie, the racism in there is played off, Apu everyone accepts, Lenny makes a comment, Carl retorts and the racism is satirised, however any gay references are just inserted as is and that feels distinctly out of place.

The language in the film also goes up a bit at times, not to South Park levels, but enough for me to reel slightly.

So, I guess then to summarise, The Simpsons Movie was boring and unsettling. Yay. :/

The Simpsons Movie - 4/10

Monster House

If this film was live action as opposed to digimation, it would be absolutely amazing! (It isn't thus it's bloody good!)

Why is this 3D animated film any different from all the other rubbish that's come out in the past couple of years? No it's not by Pixar, what it is, is produced by Robert Zemekis and Steven Spielberg, and you can tell right from the start. Why?

If you're about my age (I'm 30 (atow)) you've more than likely seen The Goonies, Gremlins, Back To The Future, Explorers and other brilliant 80's adventure movies, of which there is a distinct lack of in this day and age!!

Chowder is Chunk, [the main boy] would've been played by Corey Haim, this film is brilliant!

I don't doubt for one minute that they couldn't do the house effects in a live action and I can only hope that Bob and Steve realise that today's kids need their own Goonies!! (I'm getting sidetracked)

The dialogue is spot on, Chowder is clearly the best character, but the whole grown-up-but-not-enough part of the plot is well done with [main char], the secondary characters are a tad weak in places, but I'm putting that down to the ani..sorry digimation lacking the human aspect rather than anything else.

I laughed out loud, I grinned throughout, remembering what proper adventure films were all about, none of this Harry Potter/Stormbreaker tosh!! ;)

Monster House - 9/10

Over The Hedge

Hey, SUPERMAN'S OUT! So I went and saw Over The Hedge with my grilfriend :/ well I did agree weeks beforehand and to be fair, it wasn't a total loss.

OTH (as it will now be referred to as) is an animated feature from Dreamworks, creators of Shrek, Shark Tale et al. It's about RJ a racoon (voiced by Bruce Willis), who in his racoony ways, upsets a big old bear (Nick Nolte) and ends up having to get all the bear's stuff back or he'll get eaten. So he comes across a group of woodland creatures who awake from hibernation to find that their woodland has been developed into a housing estate (or whatever the American term is), struggling to find food for the coming winter, RJ offers a "solution"...

So, as most people know, depsite the success of Shrek, Madagascar (say it like an American), they're still no Pixar, why?

Well the thing that really struck me with OTH was that it's technically really good, technically in the sense of achieveing really good depth of field, nice virtual camera movement, fluid animation (bear in mind I'm not an animator here!), the humans looked a bit ropey, but all in all it had a good cartoon feel and looked a hell of a lot better than the afformentioned square-fest that was Madagascar.

But then that's the point.

I didn't watch Finding Nemo and marvel at the CGI water, I didn't watch Monsters Inc. and fawn over Sulley's fur (although both of which were duly admired on a second viewing), I was too busy being wrapped up in the characters and the story, this is where Pixar has the edge (I have yet to see Cars and have heard mixed views).

OTH has some good laugh out loud funny bits, mainly down to Hammy, who's your token funny guy for the film (much like Scrat in Ica Age), but I found myself slouching in my cinema seat, admiring the focus pulls rather than being involved in the story.

Mark Kermode said of Ice Age 2, that it signified the death of narrative cinema, OTH has a narrative, it's just not that great. Fun but forgettable.

Oh yeah, who the hell is Garry Shandling?!?

Over The Hedge - 5/10