Wall•E (***1/2)

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

I Am Legend (**3/4)

What does Will Smith have in common with Vincent Price and Charlton Heston? They’ve all played Dr. Robert Neville in adaptations of a novel Richard Matheson published in 1954. The Price version, 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, has the most plot-descriptive title. (The Heston version is 1971’s The Omega Man.) Here, we find Smith’s Neville having set up house in a barricaded brownstone in Manhattan. He’s possibly the only person immune to the viral plague that’s killed off most of humanity and turned the rest into aggressive zombies like in 28 Days Later, hence the need for the barricades.

Coincidentally, I guess, Dr. Neville is not only a survivor but a virologist who has been studying a cure. He’s a lot more purely heroic than the earlier Dr. Nevilles, singlehandedly trying to save the world while fighting off computer-generated zombies and still finding time to pump iron every day. Yet he’s not really an action hero, and only in part can this be classified as a thriller. Neville also spends his time chatting with his dog and listening to Bob Marley, whose best-known album title—Legend—and early death from cancer may have inspired the screenwriters, along with his message of peace.

Compared to earlier versions of the story, this is less horror, more science fiction, with the emphasis on what it’s like to be truly alone. Director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) makes good use of quietness and the eerily placid urban spaces. The screenplay is co-written by Akiva Goldsman, an Oscar winner for A Beautiful Mind. It reminded me of Cast Away, the Tom Hanks movie, only with the dog as the conversational volleyball substitute. And yet somehow I found that film more powerful, especially the ending, whose ambiguity this would have done well to emulate. There’s a good deal of flashback about Smith’s missing, presumably dead, wife and daughter that feels too perfunctory to be affecting, yet adds little to the plot. It’s a game effort at a thinking-person’s sci-fi, but one I can only recommend with reservations.

IMDB link

reviewed 12/26/07