Another year, another brilliant movie by Pixar Animation Studios. This was written and directed by Andrew Stanton, who performed the same chores for Pixar’s Finding Nemo and wrote screenplays for Monsters, Inc. and the Toy Story movies. Here, he may have come up with his most original effort yet. Like I Am Legend if Will Smith were a robot, or like a less-dystopic A.I., Wall•E imagines an Earth fallen victim to its own folly. A battered, rusty old machine, Wall•E patrols the land stacking garbage, “working to dig you out,” as a left-behind billboard broadcasts to no one. For fun, Wall•E watches very old movies on an ancient VCR salvaged from the day job.
I could’ve watched this opening segment, mostly silent except for music, for much longer than it lasts. There’s something intriguing about watching what someone, even a sentient robot who looks like an R2D2 knockoff, does alone. (I love Cast Away.) Earth is so realistically rendered in its fetid glory that I only slightly wondered what happened to all of the people, and was mildly disappointed when the movie literally goes off into space. This happens shortly after a newer robot called EVE crash lands looking for life. Wall•E, on the other hand, is looking for love, and if it sounds corny to have a robot romance, Stanton keeps it so low-key, and nearly wordless, that even (or especially) adults will be charmed. The hovering, sleek EVE looks like nothing so much as a robot designed by Apple computer. (Apple CEO Steve Jobs also was Pixar’s main shareholder until its recent acquisition by Disney.) Scruffy Wall•E reboots using the Microsoft Windows startup sound, so much of the story resembles kind of a computer version of Romeo and Juliet.
But it’s Romeo and Juliet sent to a world that resembles a odd cross of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Idiocracy, the latter being the Mike Judge comedy in which machines take over and human intelligence devolves. It won’t do to give much away here, other than that Stanton rather hilariously satirizes modern consumer culture. Back on earth, we had already learned that a giant corporation called BNL controlled nearly all aspects of human existence before everyone disappeared. This is taken to its logical conclusion.
Even more than other Pixar films, Wall•E can be enjoyed by adults, as a straight sci-fi film with a satirical edge. Smaller children are actually likely to have trouble following the plot, especially the first half. Only the last part seems like familiar warm-and-cuddly family film territory.
It’s worth noting that each and every one of Pixar’s main characters has been a male, even when it’s a male car. (The Incredibles has no single lead character, but male characters outnumber female ones.) It seems incredibly depressing that studios so clearly see girls as box-office poison, and even more so that they may be right. Wall•E may be sexless, but even so has a male-sounding name and voice, and EVE, an acronym, sounds female; it would have been more daring to avoid any hints of sexual identity. Leaving this aside—I don’t mean it as a criticism of this movie in particular—Wall•E is a mostly remarkable film.
IMDB link
viewed 6/28/08 at Moorestown; reviewed 6/30/08
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