An adventure beyond the ordinar•E.

Directors Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter hatched the idea for this film even before Toy Story had finished production back in 1995. After the premiere of Stanton’s Finding Nemo in 2003, the project started in earnest. Wall•E has now become a symbol of the kind of maturity that Pixar has achieved, both intellectually and creatively.

Earth, 2805. No humans live on the planet anymore, only cockroaches and Wall•E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter • Earth class), a trash compactor robot. He spends his days salvaging whatever interesting objects he can find in the piles of garbage that’s basically covering Earth. One day he’s startled by the arrival of a spaceship that lands on the planet and deploys a probe that curiously travels around the place looking for signs of life, blasting to pieces anything that looks like a threat. Wall•E has reason to approach the probe with caution, but he soon learns that it has a feminine demeanor and a name, EVE. He takes her home to his truck where she discovers a seedling in a pot, the kind of life sign that she’s programmed to bring back to the spaceship. EVE stores the plant inside her, activates a homing beacon and is automatically deactivated. WALL•E falls in love with the probe, even though it is now completely unresponsive, and takes loving care of it. When the spaceship returns, WALL•E is heartbroken to learn that it has come to collect EVE. As it departs, the robot clings to the spaceship, hoping to reunite with his loved one.

The fact that Fred Willard appears as a real human being, not an animated character, is intriguing, perhaps a way of making 21st century audiences understand that he belongs to a time (not far from our own) when the waste and excessive consumerism began to hurt our planet for real. Not every part of the message is crystal clear (why would humans have stopped using their legs in the future and be almost completely unaware of the Earth’s history?), but those aspects of the script are the film’s only drawback. The first part of it is masterful, featuring only the two robots and a cockroach WALL•E has befriended. These scenes of WALL•E’s day-to-day life and the subsequent romance between him and EVE have no dialogue but are beautifully rendered, at times reminding us (not least thanks to the message of the film) of Jacques Tati. What we do hear is Thomas Newman’s fine score – and Ben Burtt’s wonderful sound effects. This is the first movie where he’s a major star, even providing his voice to the lead character; Burtt’s work here evokes many of his previous classic efforts from among others the Star Wars franchise. WALL•E himself is cleverly designed, although he is essentially “E.T. 2”, as his voice, color and big eyes one can’t help but fall in love with all remind us of the homesick alien. The Earth and space locations have a clarity and beauty that is stunning and utterly persuasive; the crudely designed humans that WALL•E encounters in space are a deliberately comical contrast. Finding similarities to Finding Nemo in the story is easy as two companions embark on a great adventure in the vast unknown; the mix of slapstick and heartfelt emotions works just as well here.

Ambitions are admirably high. Some viewers harboring a distaste for everything Hollywood will think less of this film for its crowd-pleasing sentimentality. But you’ll have to have a rather poisoned mind not to appreciate the tender humanity of the machines in contrast with the ghostly desolation of Earth and the soulless, chairbound people in space.

Wall•E 2008-U.S. Animated. 95 min. Color. Widescreen. Produced by Jim Morris. Directed by Andrew Stanton. Screenplay: Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon. Music: Thomas Newman. Song: “Down to Earth” (Peter Gabriel, Thomas Newman). Cast: Fred Willard (Shelby Forthright). Voices of Ben Burtt (Wall•E/M-O), Elissa Knight (EVE), Jeff Garlin (Captain McCrea), John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver.

Trivia: Cinematographer Roger Deakins was hired as a consultant on lighting. The short feature BURN-E (2008) is a companion piece to this film.

Oscar: Best Animated Feature Film. BAFTA: Best Animated Film. Golden Globe: Best Animated Feature Film.

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Published 2009-11-12 10:37