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Starring
Benjamin Burtt and
Elissa Knight
Directed by
Andrew Standon
Final Grade:
A+Rated G
a review by Neil Carnahan
The Rundown
Man has left earth 700 years ago due to an excess of toxic trash on the planet. Left to clean up the mess is a skilled set of worker-bee type robots called WALL•E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class). But after all this time, only one robot is still operational, he’s developed a personality... and he’s lonely.
WALL•E’s day starts off like all the rest -- rolling around collecting trash, compacting it, and stacking it neatly into piles. During the course of each day, he finds what he considers to be oddities, everyday items to you and me; a woman’s bra, a Rubik’s cube, and a ring box, all of which he puts in his lunch box to take back to his home to add to his collection of ‘treasures.’ He also listens to music and views an old video tape of film Hello Dolly. He watches how the cinematic couple in love interacts with one another, and he longs for that for himself. Then one day, a spaceship lands and drops off a female robot named EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), by whom WALL•E is completely fascinated, and his adventure begins.
An Adventure Like No Other
WALL•E is the latest of animated films from Pixar/Disney, and after I saw only the teaser trailer over a year ago, I knew I had to see this film. Leading up to its release I avoided all trailers, clips, and other reviews of the movie because I wanted to go in fresh. I got the feeling that this wasn’t like the other Pixar movies that were completely silly and where the main character had wacky sidekicks for comic relief. And I was right.
The first thing one should know going in is that this is not a kid’s movie despite the G rating. There isn’t anything that is inappropriate for kids -- not at all -- it’s just that the story is probably too deep to hold kids' attention. Plus, the first 45 minutes of the movie has almost no dialogue, and I’ll get into that a bit later.
This is a fantastic movie, the likes of which has never been seen before. The character of WALL•E is unbelievably lifelike. As I mentioned above, there is little dialogue for the first 45 minutes or so of the movie, which is really the (genius) backbone of the film. We, the audience, know exactly what WALL•E is thinking and feeling through facial expressions, body language, and robot sounds. Benjamin Burtt, creator of the sound design for R2-D2, struck creative gold once again as the ‘voice’ of WALL•E. WALL•E has such deep emotions and curiosity that the audience is never guessing what he's thinking and feeling even though there is no dialogue. I connected immediately with the character. I won’t say anymore about the plot because I think it’s best that you see this one as fresh as you can.
The animation is beyond amazing as well. Up until now, I was not a fan of computer animation. I always preferred cell animation (typical of regular cartoons) or 3-D animation (Wallace and Gromit), but the effects are so vivid and realistic that it’s not hard to be wowed. I’m even going to make an early awards prediction that this movie will win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature film of the year. And rightfully so.
My only criticism of the movie is the animation of the humans. For some reason these computer animation movies can never get the people to look right. They can make anything else come to life, but animating people, they just don’t have down yet. This has always distracted and annoyed me in other movies, but I was able to overlook it in this case. Keep trying, Pixar, you’ll get it down one of these days.
The Bottom Line
This is one of my favorite movies of the year and the one of the best animated feature films of all time. I absolutely loved this movie. It’s one I need to see in the theater again and add to my DVD collection come the time. It’s a must-see.
-- Neil Carnahan, neil @ movie-popcorn.com