fine whine

Tonight we watched Robots which, by my count, is the thirteenth major blockbuster film entirely created with CGI*.

Naturally I have omitted from my count the likes of Jimmy Neutron and Veggie Tales and other non-blockbuster or kid-exclusive films. I guess I'm a snob.

Moreover I'm something of a Pixar snob. The last Pixar movie I watched was the superlative Incredibles. The last Dreamworks movie I watched was Shrek and I've never seen a Blue Sky Studios film until now.

Then again, this is only their second one.

Dreamworks hasn't impressed me since they made Antz which didn't seem all that bad, as much as I can recall of it. At the time I watched it I enjoyed it a bit more than I did A Bug's Life but that could have been my propensity at the time for the films of Woody Allen and not those of the entomological propensity. Were I watch the two of them now it is in fact difficult to say which I will enjoy more, and if I can't come up with anything better to reserve from the library I might just try the comparison.

As I said, Antz aside, I haven't found myself too fond of the all-CGI films in which Pixar had no hand. I'd like to think that I'm bigger than to just like one studio (or ideology or whatever), so I make up bogus excuses about overly exaggerated, cartoony art direction and too up-to-the-minute pop culture references. Dreamworks (they of the Shrek juggernaut) is far too guilty of this for me to even consider watching the supposedly-abysmal Shark tale.

But back to Robots. Some time ago I'd seen the preproduction renders and I admit even then the art was quite impressive. The visual team did a great job imagining what a world comprised of rocket-age robots just might look like, and colorfully so. Too bad the writers weren't nearly up to the task of matching them for sophistication.

After all, no movie deserves a ten minute sequence about armpit farts (though I must admit the chalk outline of the lightpost-bot afterward is a nice touch). That was one of four times where the movie came to a halt. Another was a brief dance number scored to Britney Spears's "Hit me baby one more time" and the other two were elaborate action set pieces that looked cool but dragged on well past the suspension of belief. There's a bit that makes up at least a quarter of the film that shows a cross-town transit system that would've done Rube Goldberg proud, except for the fact that in the end it ultimately does have a purpose. The domino sequence, on the other hand, is completely without purpose.

I can't find it in myself to really dislike the film, though. They threw a lot of interesting stars into the production, some worth hearing. For every Halle Barry or Paula Abdul or Jennifer Coolidge there was a Paul Giamatti, Drew Carey and Mel Brooks. The cast was almost too star-studded, as I couldn't determine that it was in fact Greg Kinnear playing the slick executive since his star is so much dimmer than Ewan and Stanley and Halle's.

Overall though it was obviously the triumph of lots of style over very little substance. Frankly I didn't care much at all for the story nor was I surprised by much of what happens. The lesson Blue Sky (and Dreamworks, and even Disney these days) need to learn is that a good story matters more than anything else, no matter how cool the rest of it may look.

Contrast Ferngully: the last rainforest with The Last Starfighter. Both feature early CGI, though Starfighter's is much more advanced; what matters though is that the story is just so much better than that cheesy cartoon we've all but forgotten as enviromentalism is no longer cool. But I digress. Back to the 'bots.

Jessica rather enjoyed the movie, and in the interest of showing her things that amuse her I'll likely get Ice Age, Blue Sky's first foray into the world of big-screen pixels. I'd avoided it until now as it looked utterly uninteresting, but I'd rather we sit through that than another vapid Reese Whitherspoon vehicle.

Of course, as soon as she's among the cast of a CGI flick it'll be a whole different matter entirely.

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*My list, in no order whatsoever, is thus: Toy Story 1 & 2, A Bug's Life, Antz, Monsters, Inc., Final Fantasy: the spirits within, Ice Age, Finding Nemo, Shrek 1 & 2, The Incredibles, A Shark's Tale and now Robots.