I've been an unashamed fan of Pixar movies ever since Toy Story came out and changed cartoons forever. Since Pixar has had Disney's endorsement (and has more recently been purchased by the film mega-conglomerate), its movies have all held the same charm and top-quality story. And one of the guys behind Pixar's success is Andrew Stanton, writer/director of Toy Story, A Bug's Life, and Finding Nemo. His latest is Wall-E, which is one of his best.
Now I've heard mixed reviews of this from friends. One friend said that their parents walked out half way through because it was awful, while another said that their parents watched it twice in the opening week. I knew that I had to see it for myself to find out what was up. Naturally, I was drawn to this movie (no pun intended) not just because it was a Pixar movie, but because its story takes place in a post-crisis Earth, and I have a thing for movies about the end of days.Wall-E, this small cleaning robot, is the only thing left on Earth because every human abandoned the planet for a luxury spaceship when the Earth became too full of trash. So every day Wall-E gets up with the sun and goes to work, collecting and compacting mountains full of trash all by himself, working to help make Earth inhabitable once again. Obviously it's going to take some time.
Since Wall-E is geared towards a children's audience, our main character is loveable and everything ends happily. But there is so much depth here. For starters, somehow our man Stanton has written the protagonist without one word of dialogue, yet we know his thoughts and feelings based on facial expressions (if you call a pair of robot goggle-eyes a face) and machinery noise intonations. That's quite an accomplishment and it's unique, so major props.
Also, the animation is spotless and exciting. The images of an Earth buried under huge piles of trash very powerfully counteracts the clean beauty of unpolluted space. The ship where all of the humans are is quite creative, yet sad. In the many generations that humans have been away from Earth, on board this luxury cruiseline spaceship, they've gotten fat and dumb, even more so than they must have been on Earth. Even though the director claimed in his commentary that he didn't write this story to try to get across a political agenda, I can't help but see one. If we continue on this course of messing up our environment, we're going to be in big trouble one day.
Wall-E, because he has a true heart and fights for the right thing, ends up saving humanity and falling in love with a newer, high-tech girl robot. There are some great heart felt moments as well as some honestly funny scenes. Stanton remembers that grown-ups go see his movies too, so he throws in a few comedic 'carrots' for adults here and there (i.e. Sigourney Weaver does the voice of the ship's computer). Overall, I thought it was a great movie for everybody; Wall-E is an unbeatable story that makes you feel happy for watching, yet it carries a powerful message.
