9

I seem to be developing a thing about voice-acting. In this film, I continued my skepticism, but otherwise ADORED this movie. Acknowledging that Tim Burton wasn't the whole movie, despite the posters, I can cast aside my Tim Burton adoration and just focus on the movie. Shane Acker did a wonderful job, especially visually.

I must acknowledge moments where the micro nature of the world made the framing of the action shots a little disorienting. Suddenly the characters (very small), were swinging from something, or using a piece of technology or something mechanical that hadn't previously been in the audience's view. We knew there were things around (the audience had to assume), but the nature of those things surprised us.

The techno-post-apocalyptic thing really worked for me, especially when it became clear that the apocalypse has graduated from nuclear warfare to biological weapons. I loved the random, though well-disguised, corpses that littered the countryside. I liked the human-like figures that the characters had - I get tired of models. American television seriously begins to chafe.

The soul-plot seemed thorough, but simple. The ending reflected this, although to be honest, it was the only explanation that would fit all of the facts. The dolls were too simplistic to reflect artificial intelligence, and the symbols signaled something more arcane, although they did not have inherent meanings, which seemed odd considering that the rest of the world seemed to connect directly to current culture. I mean, the dolls all knew their numbers and used them like names, and we presume they could read letters, but the symbols weren't letters in either the latin or greek alphabets, and they didn't look terribly Cyrillic either. I could be wrong.

Anyway, I liked it. It's a darker film, but obviously toned down for small children. Rottentomatoes.com doesn't like it (only a 57%), but I'd be a disagreeing vote.