Quick disclosure for this review. Pixar’s head guy is Steve Jobs. He is also the CEO of Apple…my employer but these facts don’t influence my review.
Pixar also took a huge gamble with WALL•E and I’m not talking about the “environmental” angle Conservatives have been primarily attacking (yet they praised the imaginary Randroid litany of The Incredibles). It’s the risk they took on the lack of dialog between the main robots; they converse through gestures and sound bites. Most people would be bored after 10 minutes, especially children. Personally I loved it and everyone else who saw it agreed.
In the distant future (700-800 years from now), a lonely Waste Allocation Lift Loader: Earth-Class robot (WALL•E) roams around the polluted ruins of an unknown city collecting and compacting garbage. Its refuse cubes are organized into stacks alongside the numerous abandoned skyscrapers. From a distance it’s hard to tell that some of these aren’t buildings while viewing the skyline. WALL•E seems to be the last operational one as you don’t see any other functional robots carrying out the same Sisyphean task. The centuries of solitude have led to him (really an it) developing a personality: he collects and classifies certain trinkets he finds; he has decorated his storage station; and he has a fondness for the movie Hello Dolly. The musical exhibits his loneliness.
As for humanity, they all bailed centuries ago to wait it out in deep space figuring the robots would make Earth habitable again.
So WALL•E goes through his daily routine until a starship lands near the ruins and leaves a probe. This probe turns out to be a more sophisticated Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) robot. For the plot’s sake it’s a she since WALL•E is instantly smitten by her and EVE demonstrates some traditional female traits through the animation: higher voice, smaller fingers and more expressive eyes. From here on it’s a robot love story not a cautionary tale about abusing the planet such as The Lorax. If there’s any kind of warning or message about humanity’s decline, it bears a stronger resemblance to Idiocracy than An Inconvenient Truth; you’ll see how fat and lazy our descendants become.
Other than the robots communicating non-verbally most of the time, Pixar also did some additional things differently. The glaringly one was the use of live-action sequences for the recordings of past messages left by the president of the Wal-Mart surrogate played by Fred Willard. One would think that it was some of the easiest material to animate, why go with live action? This film is probably the smallest cast for Pixar too. Normally their movies have been ensembles from the beginning. WALL-E has only four recurring human characters (namely good-luck charm Ratzenberger) and Sigourney Weaver as the starship’s computer.
They did a great job getting WALL-E to be genuinely expressive despite his resemblance to Johnny Five; I’d say he’s more related to R2-D2. Pixar made him endearing without being sickeningly sweet or annoying.
The short this time is Presto. It’s similar to last year’s Lifted but with the slapstick humor cranked to 11. Too bad the greats from Looney Tunes’ heyday, namely Chuck Jones, didn’t live to see this.
Worth Seeing?: It has been out for over a month so it might be a tad difficult since the number of theaters carrying this has declined. Then again, if you haven’t seen it by now, it’s a solid Plan B while The Dark Knight is sold out at the local multiplex. I am looking forward to this one joining our DVD collection in the Fall.