This weekend at the New York Comic Con, more footage of this year's most anticipated animated film, Pixar's Wall-E, was shown to audiences. And once again the results were shock and awe. A buddy of mine in attendance who had previously given me a mouthful about how silly and stupid this looked called me to apologize. He was taken aback and finally saw what I was talking about. Wall-E is gorgeous. Wall-E wears its heart on its sleeve. But most importantly, Wall-E doesn't talk. Not really.

So once again the question is popping up: Are audiences ready for a movie with little-to-no dialogue? A quiet film about a robot who doesn't really speak in a world where all life is gone? It's not like this is the first time it has been attempted, not even the first time someone at Disney has tried it, but it is the first time someone has gotten this far with a major, mainstream release.

The last time anyone got this close was with Disney's nigh forgotten year 2000 misfire Dinosaur. Originally slated to be a dialogue-free epic about the last remaining dinosaurs fleeing the destruction of extinction, the suits at the top got nervous, scrapped that effort and insisted on cute lemurs and snappy dialogue instead. The result was less than spectacular -- a beautiful film for its time that was mostly soulless and devoid of the importance it could have had.

But were those execs right? Dinosaur wasn't exactly a financial disappointment. It simply doesn't measure up to the classic Disney standard. Nor does it stand toe-to-toe with any of the Pixar efforts. And while the suits might have been thinking about the film being a little too cerebral, they forgot one, unarguable fact. Children will watch anything animated. No. they will. Anything. I remember as a child on Sunday mornings watching Hello Kitty in Spanish because a cartoon I had to figure out for myself was a hell of a lot better than Meet the Press (and one could argue that it still is as an adult). To this day, I occasionally say Hola Gato when I see girls carrying that neon pink eyesore around.

But all that aside, I've met a lot of resistance from armchair industry watchers claiming that there's just no way. They don't think kids are that smart (they are); they don't think their parents will be able to stand it (they will). But most of these naysayers haven't watched the footage. Everyone who has watched the footage walks out a believer. It is just so visually arresting, so heartfelt and so universal a story, that it's hard to believe that anyone could doubt its success. The real question is: Will it be a success of The Incredibles level? Or of the tamer, Ratatouille variety? That we won't know for sure until June.

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us