WALL-E... PIXAR reach for the stars... and get them.
Written: Jul 24 '08
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Absolutely wonderful from beginning to end...
Cons: ... none at all.
The Bottom Line: Do yourself a big favour and see WALL-E. If you're already seen it... see it again!
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| captaind's Full Review: WALL-E |
Considering the titles PIXAR have released over the years, you would think that they’ve set themselves an impossibly high standard and that nothing they do now could be thought of as extraordinary in comparison to their earlier movies. Well, get ready to think again – because WALL-E is a truly extraordinary movie that is, in my opinion at least, their best movie yet.
The story concerns the eponymous robot WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter – assignment Earth) who is the last of his kind on earth, only having a cockroach as a friend. We are skilfully shown by way of some short scenes in the early part of the movie that humankind have managed to create so much junk that the earth has become uninhabitable. Off they all went to outer space and waited for 5 years for the earth to be cleared up by the robots. However 700 years later and all the robots bar one have stopped working – WALL-E keeps going by salvaging parts from defunct robots to replace his own worn out bits.
WALL-E is one of the most endearing characters ever created for the big screen – despite not being able to speak as such (apart from managing his name and a few vague noises), his personality is wonderfully evident from the first moments of the film. He is curious about his surroundings, occasionally choosing items from the rubbish he’s compacting to keep in his collection. He also loved watching an old musical and despite the friendly cockroach, there’s a real sense of loneliness that comes across. When another robot, Eve – far more sophisticated than WALL-E – comes to test planet earth for signs of ability of sustain life, WALL-E finds his soul-mate (or whatever the robotic equivalent is) – but her mission impels her to return to the vast spaceship housing what remains of the human race. Undeterred, WALL-E clings to the ship and hold on for dear life…
There is so much to like about this movie. The animation is superb – even considering it’s PIXAR, some of the scenes look spectacular – and there are plenty of action sequences which are every bit as good as any live-action movie. There’s also a lot of humour – even the slapstick is funny, but there’s so much more there for adults – the satirical swipes at consumerism are hilarious and the ecological message never bogs the film down. In some ways it has a similar theme to the sci-fi classic Silent Running, though no-where near as sombre as that film’s treatment of it. What’s most amazing though is the characterisation – we’re talking about robots here, robots who don’t speak, yet we end up falling in love with them. In ROBOTS , which was good fun in itself, the robots were treated very much as people who not only spoke but had jobs to hold down etc, but while I don’t particularly remember any of the characters in that one, WALL-E and Eve will stay with me for a long time.
The music (original score by Thomas Newman) in WALL-E took me by surprise – I’d been expecting the usual sci-fi mysterious wibbly noises style of score, but there’s none of that here (though there is a homage to 2001 in one of the scenes). It’s a lively mix of styles, often using classic songs of yesteryear – and this works extremely well (besides which, any movie having a Louis Armstrong song in it is okay by me!). In fact the usual mysterious wibbly noises probably wouldn’t have been too effective here – despite the setting it doesn’t feel a bit like Star Trek / that style of sci-fi.
Some way into the film we’re introduced to humans as well, and these look good – though very chubby – products of a system where everything is done for you. With such adorable robots on display they could easily become irrelevant or forgettable, but they’re not. The Captain of the ship is a great character, like two passengers he’s suddenly awoken from the stupor of just existing by Eve returning to the ship with exciting news. It’s not all easy sailing from there though, and the plot does a great job of creating tension and excitement by way of conspiracies and action set pieces. In between WALL-E and Eve’s relationship is given time to develop, including a wonderful scene where they end up performing an elaborate dance in outer space.
Even though you just know it’s going to have a happy ending, tension is kept on a knife-edge right until the final scene. I tried to think of something I didn’t like about this movie, but failed – it’s a pure joy to watch from the first moments until the end credits. Even those end credits are stylishly different, with the pictures progressing from cave painting style and Egyptian paintings through pointillism and Van Gogh to computerised pixel art.
What more can I say? It’s one of those rare animations that children and adults can both adore for completely different reasons. It’s a great morality tale without the message overpowering the storytelling; it’s a touching love story but can be enjoyed even by the hopelessly unromantic; it’s guaranteed to have you laughing many times and leaving the cinema with a smile that would make a Cheshire cat embarrassed. I loved WALL-E from beginning to end and would happily watch it again tomorrow. I can pay it no greater compliment than to say that this is PIXAR’s best film to date.
(If you watch this in the cinema, it will be preceded by an animated short about a magician and his hungry rabbit – this was quite fun and took an unexpected direction. Nicely done. If you don’t see WALL-E at the cinema... I expect this short will make it onto the DVD package anyway.)
Other Information
This is only Andrew Stanton’s fourth film as a Director... but two of the others are Finding Nemo and A Bug’s Life (as Co-Director), so his pedigree is undisputable.
John Ratzenberger lends his voice to this PIXAR movie as well... his character’s name is John. Sigourney Weaver voices the ship’s computer.
WALL-E is voiced by Ben Burtt and EVE by Elissa Knight, not that you’d recognise their voices particularly as they’re robots who don’t talk much and don’t sound particularly human...
At the time of writing this review, WALL-E had already rocketed to #25 in IMDB’s all-time top 250 films with an average rating of 8.8/10 (of course I gave it 10/10!).
Other PIXAR Animated Movies
Ratatouille
Cars
The Incredibles
Finding Nemo
Toy Story 2
See also:
My Top Ten Computer Animated Movies
My Top Ten Animated Movies
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Family Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing
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