2008 Woodie Awards
QUICK FLIX
William Goss
Issue date: 6/26/08 Section: Variety
On the surface, it wouldn't seem like WALL-E and Wanted would have a terrible lot in common.
The former takes place 700 years from now, as the last remaining robot (voiced by Ben Burtt) on the planetary garbage dump that Earth has become falls optical units over treads for a sleek scout (Elissa Knight), who comes down from the heavens above on a mission.
The latter takes place in the here and now, as a Chicago cubicle schlub (James McAvoy) is plucked out of his woeful existence by a sleek scout of his own (Angelina Jolie, playing Mrs. Smith all over again), who in turn reveals to him his ties to a secret society of subway-surfing super-assassins, led by a wise mentor (Morgan Freeman, natch).
However, both features are cartoons about protagonists who find their banal lives given new purpose by way of a lovely lady, with the main difference being that WALL-E is intentionally animated (save for the mildly jarring inclusion of a live-action Fred Willard), while Wanted might as well be.
Taking its cues from J.G. Jones and Mark Millar's graphic novel of the same name, not to mention flaunting a frequent amount of bullet-twirling shenanigans interspersed with the droll narration of our jaded lead, Wanted looks enough like The Matrix and sounds enough like Fight Club that it becomes somewhat numbing in its slicker-than-thou pursuit of action delivered with a surplus of directorial flair, but without any real personality of its own.
Even last fall's Shoot 'Em Up managed to be mindless, amoral, and yet inspired in roughly equal measure, sparing audiences of an exceedingly silly mythos and a pervasive made-you-flinch tone in its efforts to assemble some riotously ridiculous action sequences. That isn't to say that Wanted doesn't have its fair share of admirably gonzo moments, but all too often, what goes over-the-top must come back down the other side, to increasingly unremarkable effect.
While WALL-E can be found to be equally derivative of other films, at least its ambitions show in its efforts to lift from a range that starts somewhere around Charlie Chaplin's 1931 classic, City Lights, and proceeds to the more conscientious sci-fi efforts of the 1960s and 1970s (with particular emphasis on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running). The little robot, himself cannibalizing his brethren for spare parts, comes across as an amalgam of E.T. and Short Circuit's Johnny 5, and yet it's legendary sound engineer Ben Burtt - the man responsible for R2-D2's beeps and boops - who manages to make WALL-E his own distinct, winsome entity, whose generous nature eventually extends to other characters and the film as a whole.
The former takes place 700 years from now, as the last remaining robot (voiced by Ben Burtt) on the planetary garbage dump that Earth has become falls optical units over treads for a sleek scout (Elissa Knight), who comes down from the heavens above on a mission.
The latter takes place in the here and now, as a Chicago cubicle schlub (James McAvoy) is plucked out of his woeful existence by a sleek scout of his own (Angelina Jolie, playing Mrs. Smith all over again), who in turn reveals to him his ties to a secret society of subway-surfing super-assassins, led by a wise mentor (Morgan Freeman, natch).
However, both features are cartoons about protagonists who find their banal lives given new purpose by way of a lovely lady, with the main difference being that WALL-E is intentionally animated (save for the mildly jarring inclusion of a live-action Fred Willard), while Wanted might as well be.
Taking its cues from J.G. Jones and Mark Millar's graphic novel of the same name, not to mention flaunting a frequent amount of bullet-twirling shenanigans interspersed with the droll narration of our jaded lead, Wanted looks enough like The Matrix and sounds enough like Fight Club that it becomes somewhat numbing in its slicker-than-thou pursuit of action delivered with a surplus of directorial flair, but without any real personality of its own.
Even last fall's Shoot 'Em Up managed to be mindless, amoral, and yet inspired in roughly equal measure, sparing audiences of an exceedingly silly mythos and a pervasive made-you-flinch tone in its efforts to assemble some riotously ridiculous action sequences. That isn't to say that Wanted doesn't have its fair share of admirably gonzo moments, but all too often, what goes over-the-top must come back down the other side, to increasingly unremarkable effect.
While WALL-E can be found to be equally derivative of other films, at least its ambitions show in its efforts to lift from a range that starts somewhere around Charlie Chaplin's 1931 classic, City Lights, and proceeds to the more conscientious sci-fi efforts of the 1960s and 1970s (with particular emphasis on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running). The little robot, himself cannibalizing his brethren for spare parts, comes across as an amalgam of E.T. and Short Circuit's Johnny 5, and yet it's legendary sound engineer Ben Burtt - the man responsible for R2-D2's beeps and boops - who manages to make WALL-E his own distinct, winsome entity, whose generous nature eventually extends to other characters and the film as a whole.