Is it just me or is 'WALL-E' not that great?

Today I got around to watching 'WALL-E', having missed all the box office and Oscar success the first time around in 2008. Although, perhaps controversially, I feel that the movie is slightly sub-par in terms of Pixar's incredibly high standards, despite being offered an incredible 8.5 rating on IMDb ('Toy Story' only has 8.3!). But, reviewing is not my main agenda for blogging today. So I'll wrap it up nice and neatly: 

Verdict = 67%

Obviously Pixar are yet to make a bad movie, and that pattern shows no signs of changing here, but in terms of the Pixar canon ('Toy Story', 'Monsters Inc.', 'Finding Nemo') I felt the little robot with the big googly eyes wasn't quite up to standard. Yes I knew what I was letting myself in for, a robot left to clean up the planet whilst Earth's ancestors wallow away lazily in a space-station until the job's done, but I felt this story might have operated better as a Pixar short.

I've just read on IMDb that the first robot dialogue occurs on the 22 minute mark, with human dialogue not introduced until 39 minutes. The movie establishes itself, and does a decent job, as a visual comedy from the outset with our lovable hero putting bras on his head and playing with paddle toys. I read that director Andrew Stanton actually watched films of silent stars Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton every lunch time for a year and a half just getting ideas for direction. And yes the characters can be empathised with, despite their relative muteness; however I don't feel this is enough to carry the movie alone. After about the 45 minute mark as opposed to giggling I found myself being irritated by the persistent cries of "WALL-E" and "EVE" along with a gazillion other robot sounds.

Anyway that's about as neatly as I can put it: not bad by any stretch of the imagination, it has some good twists too, but for Pixar I feel their form has dropped just a little bit.

Now that's done I can get back to the main issue, and why this movie has made me that extra little bit petty. My frustration peaked when Jeff Garlin's animated 'Captain' appeared on the screen. Now I've nothing against Jeff Garlin (huge fan of 'Daddy Day Care'!), or space-station captains for that matter but this was after we had already seen Fred Willard's CEO 'Shelby Forthright' as a live-action character. I know the movie is set 700 years in the future and the story explains  that humans have evolved and lost bone mass; however I found it too ridiculous to believe that ordinary humans could gradually change into gelatinous CGI blobs. Why was Fred Willard's character made an actual human? Why didn't Andrew Stanton just decide to animate a more traditional looking human? I know I sound petty but I found the whole thing a little distracting and couldn't get my head around why Pixar who are always so right on the money considered it a good idea. I hope they think twice in the future and don't insert footage from 'Jurassic Park' in their upcoming movie 'The Good Dinosaur'.

Why? Why? Why?!