Travel to a galaxy not so far away for a cosmic comedy adventure about a determined robot named WALL-E. After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, the curious and lovable WALL-E discovers a new purpose in life when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. Join them and a hilarious cast of characters on a fantastic journey across the universe.
Release date:
2008
It's fairly obvious to me that the staff at Pixar has sold its souls to de debbil. There's no other way to explain their staggering success, is there? Hard work? Long hours put in? Talent? Creativity? No, man, it's de debbil!
Seriously, though, the folks at Pixar Animated Studios - who last I heard haven't actually signed their names in blood or decapitated goats or anything - well, they've done it again. WALL-E is absolutely terrific. In its artistry and emotional richness and its ability to evoke that sense of wonder, this film ranks right up there with Pixar's best.
WALL-E is mostly about a wistful robot in love. There's a damning environmental message, sure, and it's impactful yet not all-intrusive. But it certainly forms the premise of WALL-E's world. In the near future, wasteful consumerism has taken its toll on the planet, its by-product of discarded garbage transforming Earth into a toxic global landfill. While a clean-up program is implemented - to render the planet again habitable - Earth's population is temporarily transferred to a massive luxury liner-class starship. Seven hundred years later, they're still on the ship.
Robots aren't supposed to feel loneliness or have dreams and yearnings and such. But, after centuries of quietly toiling away, WALL-E has gone a bit strange, or is the word "evolved"? WALL-E stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class, and our little guy is a rusty, antique trash compactor, designed as one of very many. But he's also equipped with huge, surprisingly evocative binocular-looking eyes, so there's no startlement when we're promptly charmed by him. WALL-E is the last of his kind, and, other than his pet cockroach, is the only creature left inhabiting Earth. Every day WALL-E still does his job, faithfully striving to put order to a messed up planet. It all seems futile.
WALL-E has over time become a curious collector of things, knick knacks which to him are mostly of indeterminate nature and function. Man's legacy, as seen thru WALL-E's eyes, consists of bubble wraps, cigarette lighters, egg whisks, and Rubik's Cubes. There are two meaningful items he unearths: a video tape of a film musical. And a little green sprout. WALL-E whiles his evenings away by screening the film and perhaps marvelling at the intimacy portrayed on screen. WALL-E's loneliness only grows.
One day, a space ship lands and the sleek, shiny probe EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) emerges and shatters WALL-E's placid existence. EVE's programming directs her to search for signs of ongoing photosynthesis, to see if Earth is again ready to sustain life. But, really, she's there to serve as a romantic foil for WALL-E and an impetus to the plot. Soon, WALL-E finds himself venturing beyond his day-to-day drudgery and into a mad quest for romance. Along the way, he ends up saving humanity.
Director Andrew Stanton confesses, in the audio commentary, that in preparation for WALL-E he and his crew viewed plenty of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton silent films. This pays off as, even with the dearth of dialogue in WALL-E, there is an eloquence in the evocation of moods. Much of the storytelling is conveyed thru the film's other elements. Thru lighting, thru the score, and thru the robots' limited expressions and thru their physicality. The first half hour is a wonderful study in minimalism of dialogue, as WALL-E and EVE manage to express depths of meaning merely with how they say each other's names (sound designer Ben Burtt, by the way, who voices WALL-E, is priceless). The two droids' voices may be synthetized, but the soulfulness shines thru. WALL-E reminds me quite a bit of a post-apocalyptic episode from The Twilight Zone, in which Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery are the last two people left on earth, in the aftermath of a devastating war. This episode, poignantly marked with a near absence of dialogue, is titled "Two" and remains one of my favorite Twilight Zone stories. It's worth noting that Bronson and Montgomery play two soldiers from opposite sides of the war. Okay, back to WALL-E.
The film juggles dystopia with hope, and somewhere along the way it finds moments to take wicked digs at greedy consumerism and our over-reliance on technology. 700 years from now, the life of leisure has been taken to extremes. It's a bit disturbing, gazing at the future of humanity, having grown languid and uniformly obese and wholly dependent on hoverchairs for mobility.
I'm not into HELLO, DOLLY! (see [[ASIN:B00005JL1P Hello, Dolly! Widescreen Edition]]), but, undeniably, the inclusion of the relentlessly cheery "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" and the romantic "It Only Takes A Moment" are pivotal. The opening lyrics to "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" fits, tongue-in-cheekly: "Out there is a world outside of Yonkers..." This, even as the camera pans out over the desolate garbage planet.
Can one give enough props to the animation department? Pixar's CG stuff is remarkable yet again, and, in spots, even groundbreaking (again). WALL-E and EVE aren't rendered anthropomorphically, not much anyway. But still the animators figure out a way to make them so expressive. WALL-E, that lonely custodial robot, is brought to amazing life on screen. EVE, the streamlined, ovoid-shaped droid, is nearly as endearing. EVE, in fact, has the longer journey to travel, internally. WALL-E is already in that place. EVE has to get past her programming and learn how to be truly alive.
What I have is the single disc movie. The bonus features include: an audio commentary by director Andrew Stanton; the hilarious theatrical short "Presto" - a stage magician and his rabbit have a falling out over a carrot; the all-new original short "BURN-E" (Remember that robot soldering a lightpost on the ship's exterior? More stuff happens to him); two deleted scenes, with optional intros by the director: "Garbage Airlock" (same scene as in the movie, except that WALL-E and EVE's roles are reversed, 6:52 long) and "Dumped" (in the completed film, this scene between WALL-E and EVE and the plant takes place in outer space, 2:38 long); The 18-plus-minute-long featurette "Animation Sound Design: Building Worlds from the Sound Up" focuses on Ben Burtt and the use of sound design in the film.
WALL-E, as is typical with Pixar, caters to all ages. For the young, it's the sheer wonderment of the visuals and the affecting love story. For the young-at-heart, there's the aforementioned stuff, yep, but there are also nuances to savor. And, as this film demonstrates vividly, whatever the age, it's never too late to hold hands with that someone.