WALL-E

I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge after he wakes up on Christmas morning.

WALL-E is outstanding, there's simply no other way to put it. The animation is superb, the action is thrilling, and, incredibly, I found myself captivated by the love story between two robots with three-word vocabularies.

The movie is so good I don't even have any complaints. I know some people object to the depiction of the humans, claiming it portrays the overweight in an unfair light, but I disagree. I think that within the plot of the movie it made sense and that it wasn't intended to discriminate against anything other than laziness and lethargy. If you notice, the humans are very nice and helpful when their television screens are turned off.

I also don't understand how some people consider the film environmentalist propaganda. The movie doesn't advocate for anything other than taking care of the planet, something we should all agree on. It also didn't really seem like a message picture at all, the plot and animation were too spectacular to get caught up in messages.

I think that the Academy is going to greatly regret thwarting popular expectations this year. WALL-E and The Dark Knight, in my opinion, are both deserving of Best Picture consideration, and their mass-appeal would probably boost the ratings, which are expected to be even lower than last year's all-time low. Now, popularity shouldn't equate to awards (imagine Paul Blart earning nominations) but these two snubs seem like a deliberate rebuke of popular taste in favor of preserving some ridiculous notion of superiority.

I give WALL-E a 9.9 out of 10. I think it's the best movie of 2008.