Brave

Brave marks something of unchartered territory for animation powerhouse Pixar. It's their first fairytale,, the first set in the past, the first to use magic, and the first to feature a female lead, in Kelly Macdonald's Princess Merida. It's also the Pixar film that I've waited the longest to see since it's cinema release, seeing as it came out here over a month ago, but I only saw it yesterday because of the frankly outrageous 3D scheduling of my cinema (as always, fuck 3D). 

The long delay has added to my already high level of anticipation for the film, seeing as I started reading reviews of my American and New Zealander counterparts months ago when the film was released over there (seriously, why such a long wait for us Brits? Sort it out), and my deep love of most things Pixar (Cars? meh) meant that this film was going to have to do a lot to satisfy me. And unfortunately, it didn't. 

Guaranteed Happiness: Wall-E

Welcome to the first post in my new semi-regular feature, Guaranteed Happiness. I've discovered that a lot of the films I've watched recently haven't necessarily dealt with very happy subjects, and this has been getting me down a bit. Now and then, I'd quite like to watch a happy film, or one that's uplifting and ensures that I'll have a big stupid grin on my face for at least 80% of it, and definitely at the end. After all, I'd much rather write about a film I'm passionate about, and I tend to have more to say about films that make me smile than those that make me suicidal. Praise should be aimed squarely between the shoulders of my girlfriend then, for sticking on Pixar's gem Wall-E when I was in a decidedly cranky mood a little while ago. The aim was for me to sit down and write some posts, which to be honest I was in no mood to do after a fairly crappy day at work and having to shell out over a considerable amount of cash to fix my bike, yet as soon as the film began all thoughts of blogging and even glancing at my laptop screen were out the window.

Finding Nemo

Taking a simple story, a father searches for his kidnapped son, and although transposing it to tropical fish sounds insane, the concept works, with Albert Brooks overprotective clown fish Marlin travelling to Sydney to rescue his son, who in turn is doing his best to escape the dentist’s fish tank within which he recently became imprisoned. As ever with Pixar, it is the myriad of supporting characters that make the film truly great, here ranging from the cabin fever crazed fish tank gang (voiced by, among others, Willem Dafoe, Stephen Root, Alison Janney and semi-regular collaborator Brad Garrett) to Ellen DeGeneres’ short term memory loss suffering regal tang Dory, probably the most popular and oft-quoted characters from the film.

Pixar rightfully uses the films running time to show off their immense design skills, displaying as many watery environments as possible (sewers, wide open oceans, docks, puddles) and a cornucopia of every widely recognisable aquatic lifeform, including sea turtles, jellyfish, sharks, pelicans, Aardman-inspired seagulls, stingrays, swordfish (fencing with upper class English accents), angler fish, whales and Bostonian lobsters.

It says something of the animating skill of Pixar that they had to degrade the quality of the water in this film, as initial feedback showed it was too realistic. Given enough time, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were able to make a seemingly live action film without anyone noticing.

Choose film 8/10

Pixar Day

Had a bit of an accident this morning, got knocked off my bike on the way to work. I’m fine, but my bike’s wrecked, and I was confined to the sofa for the day, and couldn’t think of a better way to cheer myself up than watching nothing but Pixar films, and all off the list!

Kicking the day off is Ratatouille, a film about Remy (Patton Oswalt), a rat with a highly developed sense of taste and a craving for cookery. The film is brilliant for its use of impeccable physical and largely dialogue-free comedy, such as when Remy is darting and diving his way around a kitchen, desperately trying not to be seen making his way to an open window, or the montage of Remy learning to use Linguini, a hapless garbage boy, as a real-life marionette. The movie has two of Pixar's greatest bad guys in the forms of Skinner (Ian Holm) the head chef at Linguini’s restaurant, and Anton Ego, Peter O’Toole imbuing the harsh food critic with his dry, creaky tones, and his character rounded out with his skull-themed typewriter and coffin-shaped office. Ian Holm, Brad Garrett and the rest of the cast gleefully over-egg their French accents, and Jamie Oliver’s cameo as a health inspector is perfect.

Second was Wall-E, about a lone robot cleaning up an Earth where the skyscrapers are dwarfed by towers of waste. The personification of Wall-E, from hanging his tracks up at the end of a day’s work, rocking himself to sleep at night and waking disorientated and low on battery life in the morning are all expertly and hilariously implemented, as is the notion of a robot love story, when Wall-E meets EVE, a futuristic female robot sent to search for sustainable life. The film comes with a message, showing the future mankind is destined for if we continue to abuse our planet and ourselves, depicting future humans as lethargic blobs, floating around on hover chairs, communicating completely digitally and eating lunch... in a cup. I have previously discussed my love of dinosaurs, but here I would like to add robots to the list of things that make me giddier than a small child in a sweet shop, and Wall-E has these by the Waste Allocated Load Lifter. If I could pick any job, past or present to work in, it would have been character designer on Wall-E, hands down, although after my run-in this morning, the film featured far too many robot collisions than I would have liked.

I find the Incredibles, the final Pixar film of the day, to be a little overrated, though by no means unenjoyable. It is often regarded as one of the more superior pictures in their history, yet I prefer almost all of their other films (Cars will not be discussed here). I like the premise, of a family of undercover superheroes being brought out of retirement, find the plot to move along nicely and remain interesting throughout, and enjoy spotting the references and nods to the superhero genre (“You got me monologuing”), but I feel there is something missing, preventing the Incredibles from scaling the heady heights of its brethren. I’m not sure if it’s the fairly flat characters, with Brad Bird’s Gok Wan-esuqe costume designer Edna or Wallace Shawn’s belligerently whiny boss being the only memorable standouts,  or if it’s the lack of humour, when compared to the rest of Pixar’s catalogue, but for me this will always be another film, rather than one I look forward to. Still good fun though.

Ratatouille 9/10 Choose film

Wall-E 10/10 Choose film

The Incredibles 8/10 Choose film

Toy Story Trilogy

Today’s volatile weather conditions allowed for a productive afternoon film-wise, as a planned bike ride along the beaches of Bournemouth was cut short by sporadic torrential downpours, meaning I crossed a trilogy off the list; Toy Story 1-3.

Watching the original Toy Story, the first feature-length motion picture created entirely using computer animation, always send me back to my childhood, aged 8 years old, sat in the cinema watching in wide-eyed wonder as the pixels were brought to life before me, with my Dad sound asleep in the next seat. It's one of my earliest film-related memories (my earliest cinema experience that I know of was the Lion King, but that's another post).


Pixar, for it is they responsible for both this wondrous memory and, perhaps, my love of film in general, have crafted in Toy Story that most miraculous of creations, a debut feature near perfect in execution, akin to Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, or Sam Raimi's Evil Dead. The secret to Toy Story's success? My personal opinion is that, as with those others mentioned, the film has an overall, well known genre (children's animation), but refuses to stick to it, flitting between and parodying a cornucopia of other film genres, including war ("A good soldier never leaves a man behind!"), the heist in Sid's house, the zombie-like attack, a car chase, road movie, seemingly no movie staple is left untouched.


This multitude of movie pastiches continues through Toy Stories 2 and 3, taking in westerns, rescue missions, an amazing Star Wars riff, rom-com (Ken & Barbie), physical slap-stick comedy, a prison escape, nightmare sequence, even elements of horror, especialy with the trilogy closer's truly disturbing screaming monkey. Also, the ending of Part 2, involves that greatest of movie staples, a mad dash to and around an airport, yet Pixar approaches each aspect so uniquely that they appear fresh and new.

One of the highlights of the trilogy is the immensely enjoyable opening to part 3, where the original films have become so well known that they are ripe for self-homage, with the fantasy openings of the previous two films merged together in a tremendously fun fashion, making Pixar seem like the best possible place to work. If anyone from Pixar is reading, dear God please hire me. Please.


If I have to fault the films (and alas I do) then it is the first film's over-focus on its leads. Whilst the characters are good, and incredibly well inhabited by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, it's the supporting characters that really shine brighter, and keeping the leads away from them for the majority of the picture is the only fault I can really pick. This problem was fixed by the time Toy Story 2 was released, with Rex, Hamm, Mr. Potato Head and Slinky-Dog being given a lot more well-deserved screen time, although the introduction of the weakest main character, Jesse, is just about corrected by pulling the one-two casting coup of Kelsey Grammar and Wayne Knight.

Also, being a mechanical engineer by day, I can't help but ignore that not all of the physics works out, but then this is a film in which inanimate toys come to life, so maybe that can be ignored. Also, at the end of Toy Story 3, how does Andy know Jesse and Bullseye's correct names? He was given them as gifts, and originally called Jesse Bazooka Jane. Sorry, shutting up.


Toy Story choose film 9/10
Toy Story 2 choose film 9/10
Toy Story 3 choose film 10/10