Wall-E

Rating

Director

Andrew Stanton

Screenplay

Andrew Stanton

Length

103 min.

Starring

Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver

MPAA Rating

G

Review

Charming, effervescent and socially relevant are three terms that accompany almost every Pixar feature thus far made. Wall-E takes many of those attributes and does them superbly.

Opening the film with the catchy song “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” from the musical Hello, Dolly! is an unusual choice, for most of the youngest audience members may be unfamiliar with the 1964 Broadway musical or the 1969 feature film. The song extols the virtues of getting gussied up and parading around in your best clothes to help yourself feel better. Its inspiring music and lyrics act as a terrific counterpoint to the vast desolation left behind on earth when civilization sails into the stars to avoid taking responsibility for its over-consumption and waste.

Amidst the garbage, surrounded by long-broken husks of machines like himself, an artificially-intelligent garbage compactor, the adventurous and curious WALL-E unit weaves in and out as it builds huge skyscrapers of compacted trash, trying to complete the job it was assigned to do so many years before.

Wall-E’s life is turned upside down when a strange spaceship lands on earth leaving behind a sleek, glimmering egg-like machine sent to survey the planet for life among the wreckage.

The bright white construct seems utterly content in performing its task, but eventually warms up to Wall-E whose meek nature is extremely endearing. Wall-E, however, doesn’t realize what he’s in for when she spots a small plant he had discovered and brought home to decorate his walls of broken and unusual treasures.

After the first half of the film, it follows Wall-E as he tries to follow Eve back on the spaceship as it retrieves her, discovering a massive space cruise liner filled with obese people flying on floating cars unaware of what is going on around them.

The idea of spending so much time without dialogue is a friendly one for those of us who admire the old silent films, but may be more daunting for those who prefer their action loud and bombastic. However, Pixar mitigates this problem by putting in mechanical noises equated with emotional attributes, limited use of modulated conversation, and amazing sound effects.

When the film gets into its final half, it speeds into the more traditional storytelling to which Pixar is accustomed. The audience is introduced to a small array of doting characters whose job seems to be only to accentuate the adorable nature of the lead characters.

If there is a problem with Wall-E, it’s these final scenes where much of the silent film approach is abandoned. It is replaced by the typical cartoonish chase sequences, moral platitudes and emotional satisfaction that has accompanied such successes as Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo. The film was promising to be entirely original and new, but ended up being only partially new, but nonetheless spectacular, leaving Ratatouille as the most original film in the company’s oeuvre.

Legendary sound effects artist Ben Burtt voices the titular robot. Whether he uses his own voice or just modulates sound to create the vocals, his is still a singular achievement. Creating such emotional depth and dimensionality with such minimal output is one of the film’s crowning achievements. Pixar’s characters have always been objects capable of human-like movement or emotions, but giving a machine a personality is a tremendous achievement.

The film’s statement against commercialism is strong and effective. It’s not difficult to imagine our current societal concerns leading to a world as described in the film. It may be alarmist, but much of what’s present in Wall-E has real world significance and will hopefully influence a generation of young consumers to limit its consumption and become better stewards of the environment of the only planet we have.

Review Written

August 6, 2008