Nerd Pride Radio

With the release of Finding Dory, Penguin stops by again to join Milhouse and D-Rod to discuss Pixar's legacy so far. They give their opinions on films they've seen, how everybody demands the sequel to The Incredibles ASAFP, and how much D-Rod hates the movie Cars.

I'm amazed at how in line my thoughts are with you guys on all the Pixar movies.

Although, let me partially defend Cars for a second. It IS a bad movie for Pixar. No doubt about that. But I don't believe the first one was a blatant toy ad/cash grab as you suggest. Cars was one of the original stories that the Pixar guys came up with long before they became famous, and it really was Lasseter's love letter to Route 66. The sentiment went over well with people I know who are older than I am, but I found it cloying and preachy and outdated. The lesson of Cars is: the world was a better place before progress ruined everything. Bleah. Screw that. But in spite of how much I don't enjoy it, I think Pixar was sincere in the attempt.

Cars 2 is the only one I haven't seen. That one really does sound like a blatant cash grab.

I've been saying for a while that the first part of Up is some of the most brilliant storytelling ever committed to film while the remained of Up is a perfectly serviceable and entertaining kids movie, but nothing great and not even up to the level of most other Pixar works. But the affection we developed for the main character in that first 20 minutes carries us through the rest of it. Having had time to put it all in perspective, it works better as a stand-alone piece.

Unlike the rest of you, I actually watched Good Dinosaur, and I think for me, it might beat out Cars for the title of Worst Pixar Feature. On a technical level, it was a triumph, but then the marvel of the world they created was marred by these goofy, nonsensical... truly cartoonish... dinosaur characters who seemed really really out of place in their own movie. I remember walking away from my first viewing of Cars at least having been entertained, but other than a couple of bright spots, my memories of Good Dinosaur are all pretty painful.

Monsters University is not as bad as you guys think it is. It's no masterpiece. I put it near the bottom of my list of Pixar films (but before Cars, Cars 2, and Dinosaur), but that still makes it better than most other kids movies being made. It was funny and entertaining. The friendship of Mike and Sully wasn't the goal of the film. They sewed that up early on. Like I say, not the best, but worth watching once.

The only place where we have serious disagreement is Wall-E. I enjoyed it on first viewing, but found I can't go back to it. The silent bits with Wall-E are beautiful and touching, but anything with the humans just becomes preachy and obvious. Yeah we get it: it's the fatty version of Idiocracy. No really we get it... quit beating us over the head with it. Like with Up, the really good parts of this movie blinded me to the obvious flaws of the rest of the movie on first viewing.

See, I'm building my list from the bottom up...

Cars 2
Good Dinosaur
Cars
Wall-E
Monsters University

After that, I can't feel good about ranking them, because the next one would be Finding Dory or Brave, but I LOVED both of those movies. Ranking them 12th or whatever on my list of Pixar movies doesn't really do them justice, because everything other than my bottom five are all 4 and 5 star movies.

I really loved The Good Dinosaur. That being said, I would love to watch it without dialog. Keep all the effects work and maybe even the non-language verbalizations.

It's the first Pixar western, and I have a soft spot for westerns.