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WALL-E
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: June 27, 2008

These trips to the cinema are always fun, but so much more rewarding when the flick is great. Folks, if you're hoarding gasoline, here's a reason to take a drive. It's called WALL-E, it's animated, and it's brilliant. WALL-E is the latest spectacle from Pixar Studios, whose previous films include Toy Story, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Finding Nemo. (This just in: They're onto something.) Like its predecessors, this computer animated yarn is better-written and more emotionally engaging than most of its live-action competition, and is enough to make you wonder why flesh-and-blood movie stars keep running around trying to entertain us. Those poor slobs.

WALL-E is a bona-fide science fiction flick, set in a dystopian future, with a robot as its main character. Don't get snagged on that word "dystopian" though. The future of our human race is rendered in hilarious satire, and meanwhile, the robot is cheerful and enterprising enough to bring us all back from that ignoble fate. His name is WALL-E, which stands for "Waste..." something-or-other, and his job is to clean up the endless trash heaps that have left the earth uninhabitable to humans. When we meet him, he is the last of his kind. Lonesome, except for one apparently indestructible roach, he wheels his rusty little cubic body around on tank treads, making skyscrapers out of garbage.

The charm of this little robot cannot be overstated. Of course we've seen this kind of thing before in Star Wars, but this film pays loving respect to that and several other science fiction classics. I noticed a musical cue that was distinctly reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and another borrowed from Alien. And in a stroke of casting genius, the filmmakers hired Sigourney Weaver to voice the mainframe of the humans' space station. Perfectly imitating the computer she once verbally abused in Alien, she even gets to read off a chillingly detached countdown. Awesome.

But of course it's R2D2 to which this film owes its soul. The grandaddy of all cute little robots, R2 is, in fact, one of my all-time favorite movie characters. He was so easy for the Star Wars heroes to ignore, and yet he saved their asses time and again. Now WALL-E comes along and seriously runs the risk of ripping off a cinematic icon. But this robot, with his mournful binocular-looking eyes, and with his weirdly agile slapstick body language, is definitely his own character. That said, the film's opening twenty minutes-or-so does pay subtle and welcome homage to George Lucas' little trash can on wheels. WALL-E's solo wanderings on a deserted planet earth hark back to that magical first act of Star Wars, with C3PO and R2 stranded in the desert. Lonesome robots. What could be more sci-fi?

As the plot unfolds, WALL-E meets a girl—a high-tech, gleaming, floating girl robot from outer space. Her name is EVE, which stands for "Environmental..." something-or-other, and she looks like a cross between a dolphin, a hummingbird, and an iPod. She's a bit aloof with WALL-E at first—more concerned with her mission to round up earth's plant life, should any be found. But she soon warms up to her cubic cohort, especially once he follows her into outer space and back to her mothership, which turns out to be populated by earth's descendants.

Here I run the risk of spoiling the plot, and happy I am, indeed, to report back from a film with secrets worth keeping. The humans in this film, and the gang of robot misfits WALL-E meets aboard the space station, are hilarious, folks. Meanwhile, the film's trendy environmental message isn't annoying or heavy-handed (and it needn't be, given that sci-fi writers were addressing this issue well before Al Gore ever did.) And, folks, I haven't even mentioned the film's fluid and beautiful animation, which, like all good CGI, serves the characters, the story, and the viewers' willingness to be transported. The animation is amazing, but almost goes unnoticed—a testament to the spell this film weaves.

Like so many Pixar projects, WALL-E is a masterpiece disguised as a kids' movie. In fact, more than any of their other films, this one may be too mature for some kids. I watched it in a packed theater, and many of the younger viewers were getting antsy during the occasional long (and thoroughly entertaining) stretches without dialogue. I say this not to discourage anyone from taking their kids, but to warn parents that this may not turn out to be junior's favorite animated film. Meanwhile, many other children, and seemingly all of the adults, were riveted and laughing throughout, and the theater erupted with applause at film's end. The point is, this movie is for moms and dads, and aunts and uncles too. Don't miss it, folks. It's the best film of the year, so far.

Copyright © 2008 Theo Michelfeld