Four Dimensional Toybox

Rating: Null/10 (16 November 2008)

I see that my previous comment on this film was deleted.
This is the thing that started it all: Pixar. Somewhat photorealistic modeling. Deep, deep attention to story dynamics. An animated feature not so polished since "Snow White." Something worthy. Something that led to the reinvention of Disney.
Its an iconic turning point, like "Citizen Kane," "2001," "Bonnie and Clyde," Greenaway's "Tempest." (and others) Many things after change.
So it should be seen on its historical basis alone. Here already you can see that Pixar decides to combine goals. They want the movie to be just as good as the best non- animated movie. There is the well-documented attention to refining and refining the story dynamics so that the narrative spine simply works. That took years.
What I mean by combined goals is that they also realized that they were presenting something relatively new in their three D modeling capability. So they wanted to have that new cinematic vocabulary enhance the narrative dynamics and vice versa. It is subtle here, not fully developed until "Nemo." But its plain to see when pointed out: the camera simply moves in ways that a real one does not. There are a broader set of intimate and distanced observer perspectives. These are not overused, lest you notice them, but you can see that out tolerance and viewing skill has slowly evolved from this to the later Pixar projects. (At this writing, that is "Wall-E.")
The business about family and desired roles are not "the point" as some would say, but strategies to explore this deeper narrative power.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.