TIME magazine asks a good question: Can WALL-E Win Best Picture? Needless to say, I’m rooting for it. But the article lays out the hurdles our little robotic hero will have to overcome:
- No animated movie has ever won Best Picture.
- Academy voters, especially actors, are biased against animated movies.
- Disney/Pixar may not want to spend the money promoting it for Best Picture, due to that bias.
WALL-E is far and away the most well-reviewed movie of the year so far, and it’s incredibly unlikely five other films will come along and get better overall critical reviews. WALL-E is also sure to be one of the highest-grossing movies of the year.
In other words, it has both critical and popular support.
But the Academy would much rather honor artsy-fartsy crap like No Country for Old Men, Crash, and Chicago — movies that appeal to Hollywood snobs much more than something like WALL-E ever will. And they wonder why the Oscars TV ratings are at an all-time low. The critics and people are voting now, and WALL-E deserves a chance at Best Picture.
2 Comments
Nice description of Crash and Chicago. Crash absolutely SUCKED; its points were SO trivial, not to say trite, the story was woven together with the most tangential of threads, and the acting was mediocre at best. Worst movie I had seen since Magnolia & I wanted my money back from Blockbuster after I’d rented it. Chicago was just mediocre I’d say. And I haven’t seen No Country yet so I’ll withhold judgment on that.
Conversely, Wall-E was highly enjoyable, it made legitimate points that were not lost on both kids and adults, and despite little real dialogue, its characters were rather richly developed. Plus the animation was incredible.
Wall-E totally looks like the robot from “Short Circuit”… minus the cheesy 80’s style of course