FILM REVIEW – WALL-E (2008)
Wonderful Pixar produced and Disney distributed full length animated feature, largely dialogue free for much of its length,
Wall-e is the last of a group of clean up robots left to the duty of tidying up a highly polluted planet Earth. Our humans have abandoned the planet, believing that they will return in about five years after cruising round the Galaxy on a giant luxury space liner. In fact, they are still out there 700 years and many generations on.
Most robots assigned to the clean up have given up or broken, but Wall-E has maintained his duties diligently, clearing enough debris to allow some flowers to grow again.
A probe, called Eve, a robot sent to find Earth and report back to the captain of the Space-liner when we are found to be inhabitable again, witnesses his duties.
Wall-E falls in love with Eve and protects her from all manner of harm. When she goes back to the cruise liner, Wall-E stows away to join her, causing chaos among the robots and computers who run the ship, as they are torn between staying on the cruise or coming home to Earth.
Captain, and passengers alike are grossly overweight, and totally dependent on their on board comforts, but Wall-E and the rebels force them to start standing up for themselves and overthrowing their easy brainwashed consumer fuelled existence. That the same Buy N Large shopping corporation who polluted Earth controls the people says it all.
There is some wonderful inventiveness here, the robots in love, Eve’s exasperation at Wall-E’s stalker like crush on her, the little robot obsessed with tidying up after Wall-E who unwittingly pollutes the super-clean sleek liner with dirt and rust. Sigourney Weaver’s obsessive ship’s computer voice, and some stunning animation.
A neat touch is Fred Willard’s non-animated role as the initiator of the evacuation, seen only in archive film footage, as he goes from cheery optimism about the clean up of Earth operation to despair at the magnitude of the task. The animated and obese nature of the other humans gives a sense of how far we have devolved and decayed since his time.
There are homages to 2001 A Space Odyssey, in use of Also Sprach Zarathrustra music when the Captain learns to walk, and in the computer’s Hal 9000 eye beam.
While Eve looks like an egg, and has somewhat destructive tendencies, Wall-E seems to be modelled on robot Number Five from the 1986 film, Short Circuit, but this film avoids the mawkish sentimentality of that one.
A tremendous film for all the family to enjoy.
Links – Wall-E on the International Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/ and on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E
Arthur Chappell
