mrkwooWALL-E (2008)
January 12th 2009 16:28
WALL-E, short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-class, is a lone robot on Earth 800 or so years into the future, dutifully cleaning up what has made the planet uninhabitable for humans. WALL-E appears to be the only robot still functional after centuries of cleaning up, and after all these years, he has developed human-like qualities. He exhibits an eager curiosity for the trinkets he finds in the piles of rubbish he goes through and is exchanted by old footage of Hello, Dolly!. We also discover that WALL-E is lonely, and other than a cockroach (expect them to survive!), WALL-E is highly deprived of loving company. But along blasts in a sleek and highly advanced-looking robot named EVE, and WALL-E is as smitten as a robot can be. But EVE hasn't come to Earth to make friends. She has an important mission to save the world.
It's hard not to be completely charmed by this film. WALL-E's innocence is one that you hope he never loses, as it is so pure and wonderfully infectious. The sound effects of Ben Burtt, allow WALL-E his limited by highly expressive noises which along with his body movements helped to communicate his feelings. WALL-E reminded me of Woody Allen at times as he awkwardly stumbles his way into EVE's... err, hard drive? This is if Woody Allen were to ever lose the gift of the gab and had to seduce his beautiful women by other means. There are great touches of slapstick, borrowing from silent film to portray feelings of wonder and of love without the luxury of words or facial expression. This makes the film a truly visual one, as almost every moment, every action can translate into a thousand words.
The computer animation is spectacular. They really had to impress with the vistas of deep space and they definitely did not disappoint. Their intrictate creations of the destroyed planet and the cruise space ship were fanatastic and all the minor characters that whiz in and out of the screen are surprisingly memorable and full of life, despite the fact that most are machines like WALL-E and EVE. Pixar's animation impress audiences more and more as each film is released, their tireless work to create a wonderful, sugarcoated world for the kids and thrilling effects for the grown ups to marvel at. And thankfully, the inclusion of live-action actors doesn't dull the effect of the animation one bit.
The film has touches of many futuristic film and literature, like Brave New World, Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars to name those I could pick out, making it much more ambitious than previous films. WALL-E had to surpass the imagination of the greats to create a thrilling and believable futuristic world of its own, so as to avoid the kitsch of Back To The Future Part II. And although these touches don't quite succeed in making WALL-E a stand out piece in cinematic history as they had hoped, the result is still highly impressive.The prospect of a global cooperation called "Buy n Large" taking over the world doesn't sound all that unrealistic, and by now, it doesn't even sound all that alarming. The humans on the spaceship are completely saturated by Buy n Large, every facet of their daily routine is controlled by it, not that anybody is complaining. However, I get the feeling that like most futuristic works, WALL-E will seem dated in a decade's time in terms of its themes. It doesn't quite have the universality that it needed to be timeless.
Overall, WALL-E is a visually stunning film with a great deal of warmth, humour and touching moments between these adorable creations. Barely the essence of classic films, it's immensely uplifting and cheerfully encourages the audience to take responsibility and simply, to start again. It reminds us to not getting too caught up in our "directives" and remember to live as humans, as people inventive enough to save the world rather than destroy it. 8.5/10
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