Directed by: Andrew Stanton
Premise: In the future, the earth has become so
polluted that humans have left the planet while Waste Allocation Load Lifter,
Earth-Class (Wall-E) robots are left to clean up the mess. After 700 years only
one robot remains until the planet is visited by EVE, a robot looking for
vegetation. Wall-E is infatuated with EVE and follows her into space, where
humans live sedentary lifestyles on luxury starship.
What Works: The character of WALL-E
ranks among other iconic robotic characters like R2-D2 from Star
Wars, Robby the Robot from Forbidden
Planet, HAL 9000 from 2001:
A Space Odyssey, and Number 5 from Short
Circuit. He is a full character displaying as much emotion and
complexity as a human actor, and that is the real revelation behind this
film. For the first third of the picture there is virtually no dialogue
and even as humans come to figure into the story, dialogue is sparse.
WALL-E, EVE, and most other robots speak only in chirps, beeps, and word
fragments but the film is able to completely convey their ideas,
motivations, and emotions by letting the visuals and intonations of the
characters speak for themselves, trusting in the intelligence of the
audience to follow along. This is essentially a silent film and WALL-E
and his co-stars put on a show that is equivalent to the work of Buster
Keaton and Charlie Chaplin; WALL-E’s adventures after EVE are
consistent with Keaton’s character in The
General and the robot’s physical comedy is very akin to
Chaplin’s work in Modern
Times. WALL-E is up to the standard set by Keaton and Chaplin
and the animators have created an awkward but loveable character and
given him great bits of comedy alternating with scenes of drama. EVE is
given the same kind of treatment and she has some very touching scenes
with WALL-E, which is amazing considering she has no face and her body
resembles an egg. Aside from what the film does with the robots (or
perhaps through them) WALL-E is able to make a switch in its
second half and make some very sharp social satire. The wasteland of
the future is not just the stacks of garbage left on Earth’s surface;
it extends into the perpetual vacation of mass consumption the humans
have allowed themselves to be lulled into. WALL-E includes a lot
of allusions to other science fiction films but instead of using them
for cheep laughs, WALL-E situates itself into a
genre context; this is the science of 2001 and the used future of Star Wars and Alien with the politics of Blade
Runner and Metropolis.
The result is a next step for the science fiction film; WALL-E brings together the themes and visuals of science fiction’s past and
adds, of all things, a romantic comedy between a pair of robots, to
bring the genre into a more human place than it has been in a long time.
What Doesn’t: The only weakness of WALL-E is in a few unnecessarily protracted scenes, especially as WALL-E arrives on the
human cruise ship. Here the film gets caught up in itself for a bit. The scenes
are fun to watch, but they go on a bit longer than they should.
Bottom Line: This year has already seen some impressive animated films such as Kung Fu Panda and Horton Hears a Who!, which is a testament to the power of this medium. However, WALL-E may well be the Citizen Kane of the computer animation genre. It’s that groundbreaking and that well crafted and steeped in a well-entrenched genre while reinventing it.