In the past few days, I watched two recent Pixar movies that I have not had a chance to see yet: Ratatouille and WALL-E.  Ratatouille wraps up my efforts to see all of Brad Bird‘s movies; I saw WALL-E because it looked to have some great animation from a great studio.

Ratatouille, along with the other Brad Bird movies I watched, was fantastic.  It is an excellent story that is well animated and well directed.  It might not be as good as The Iron Giant, but I did like this movie better than The Incredibles (not that I have any problem with The Incredibles – it was a really good movie, too).  And that fact suprised me — if I guessed in advance which movie I would prefer, one about superheroes or one about a rat that likes to cook, I would have gone with the superhero movie!

Unfortunately, I don’t have such high praise for WALL-E.  Although it was very well animated and the 3D work was very beautiful, I could not connect with the story enough to really care about what was happening.  I don’t know if it was the fact that the characters were not easily relatable, or if the story wasn’t written well enough to make me interested in the characters, or something else, but I found myself checking my watch and waiting for the end of the movie.  I personally blame the story, especially if you contrast this story about robots with The Iron Giant, where you really care about the giant robot by the end of the movie.

On a final note, I really liked the specials available on the Blu-Ray disc for Ratatouille.  It has a lot of interviews with Brad Bird and other Pixar staff, a few deleted scenes with commentary, and a couple of extra shorts.