‘Wall*E’: Quality as business plan

“Quality is the best business plan of all.”

So Pixar chief John Lasseter told the L.A. Times.

And the combination of reading that statement and seeing Pixar’s remarkable “Wall*E” last night gives me hope for, well, everything.

I’m not going to post a full-on “Wall*E” review. You can find plenty of raves all over the Internet. I’ll just add to the voices that the film’s excellence lies in large part to its restraint. There are so many places where its script could have gone wrong (witness “Happy Feat,” the penguin flick that moved along beautifully before stumbling terrible in the final stretch). There are so many places where it could have gone for the obvious. There are so many places it could have turned preachy or pandering.

Instead, “Wall*E” stays true to itself. It creates its own kind of excellence. Which is what art, I think, is supposed to do.

Your thoughts?