3 reviews

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Helen Ward August 14, 2008

The human race has fouled up again and the Earth is covered not in flood water but a sea of junk. In space, humanity has been preserved on an upmarket ark (shopping malls, beauty parlours and swimming pools) courtesy of the Buy ‘n’ Large Corporation. The original passengers had planned to take a short holiday in space to get away from the mounting rubbish: that was 700 years ago. Seven centuries of inbreeding and shopping have taken their toll with each generation several sizes larger than the last resulting in a race of couch potatoes.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, WALL-E, a rubbish collection robot who cheerfully carries on collecting, compressing and sorting junk in a deserted city where stalagmites of waste dwarf crumbling skyscrapers, just as he has done every day for the last 700 years.

But all that is about to change …

This is a visually uneven film, but the stunningly cinematic scenes on Earth and in space easily outweigh the ho-hum animation inside the space liner. A strong story line that moves along at a good pace puts this firmly in the all round entertainment category: there is something here for adults and children alike.

But the star of the show is undoubtedly WALL-E. Physically, there is more than a passing resemblance to ET; but the character is that of Chaplin’s tramp: a seamless blend of child-like wonder, humour, pathos and awkwardness with robots of the opposite sex that will have you laughing, crying and cheering until the credits roll. It’s perhaps no accident that the most memorable part of the film is the first 20-30 minutes where there is no dialogue.

Eco parable? Paradise lost and regained? Clever piece of marketing? Or just good solid family entertainment? Make up your own mind.

I admit it, I was cynical about this latest endeavour from Pixar. Yes I loved Monsters Inc and The Incredibles, and was also a fan of Toy Story, but as more and more movies in the style of Pixar animations have done the rounds I've been strangely wearied by their post-modern gags and worried that their charm was being diluted - take the third rather soulless instalment of Dreamworks' Shrek for instance.

However in spite of myself I was rather charmed by WALL-E. Set 700 years in the future, in an Earth abandoned by mankind because of the extent of man-made pollution and waste rendering it uninhabitable, WALL-E is the last of the trash collecting robots left. The first 40 minutes see him pootle around an eerily realistic and haunting city, completely empty but for the towers of waste and giant skyscrapers dominating the skyline. He’s happy enough but lonely; however everything changes upon the arrival of Eve, a sleek, sophisticated robot sent to Earth to discover whether there are viable signs of life, to assess whether humankind can return. Given that the sparse dialogue in the first part of the film, it's incredible that we are so hooked by the action and it demonstrates how much personality the animators imbue WALL-E with. WALL-E falls in love with Eve and tries to distract her from her 'directive' in some funny and sometimes even touching moments. However his courtship is interrupted when, upon offering her a plant she snatches it away and they end up back her base, a large space ship where the humans are living. The humans all live totally sedentary lives, communicating through computers and never walking anywhere. They don't even need to chew as all their food is in liquid form! They are mindless consumers in every sense of the word and are nothing more than blubbery masses. The link between corporate greed and our threatened environment is abundantly clear. Eve and WALL-E soon set about trying to save the humans from themselves by using the plant to return to Earth, giving them a second chance. Along with the help of the ship's chunky captain (voiced by Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin), they face many obstacles, including the spaceship's power crazed and animated steering wheel. Will they do it? You'll have to watch to find out ...

The movie is a sophisticated looking affair with some memorable and quite beautiful space scenes. By contrast the humans look like overgrown babies and are infinitely less subtle than the realism with which the rest of the movie is depicted, but I guess the animators wanted to stress the point to kids that they need to be actively involved in securing the health of their planet and themselves, which as messages go isn't bad. For film buffs there are references to other movies, notably Kubrick's 2001, and the sheer technical wizardry of the movie is enough to satisfy the more discerning movie-goer. So, all in all, there’s something for everyone in this charming tale of robot love.

Lindsey Davis 11 Aug 2008

The last robot on earth meets interplanetary she-bot Eve, falls head over caterpillar tracks and pursues her to the off-world colony where the blobby, ultralazy remnants of humanity live in uber-consumerist slackerdom. Can this possibly be a turning point in the future history of humanity? Will mankind get the kick up the behind it so desperately needs from a sentimental trash can?

Telling you, of course, would be a full-on slap-in-the-face spoiler but forget applying the question to the plot for a moment - apply it to reality. Can the message of Wall-E, already played out to millions in the US, actually make any difference as we continue our seemingly irreversible slide into planetary degradation, environmental debasement and corporation-sponsored cultural annihilation? And does it matter that this message comes, perhaps inevitably, from a corporation many would blame for such crimes - Disney? Well, I don't know if any one film could change the world (or two, or three, or one hundred or a thousand) but this beautiful film is definitely a resounding bugle call, perhaps a rather lonely one, sounding out hauntingly as we flush our world, society, possibilities and even hope down the crapper. If we heed such a cry we might just have a chance to turn things around - but currently, we're in a world where a shrug-offable memorial concert to a dead Princess receives less criticism in the press, pub and bus queue than the next week's one to raise ecological awareness. We buy into the lies about Global Warming just being a conspiracy so that we don't have to get up, walk across the room and press the off switch on our perpetually tuned-to-tripe TV sets.

So, the message of the film simply cannot be ignored. Wall-E is a compelling, serious and heartfelt plea dressed up as a romantic jaunt into the most profound kind of nightmare - a nightmare that is truly, awfully hideous but still reversible. GK Chesterton, on the matter of fairy tales, told us that it is not so important to know that Dragons exist as it is to know they can be defeated, and that holds here too, but Wall-E's bottomed-out post apocalyptic landscape also suggests such nastiness would be better avoided in the first place.

After an almost entirely successful first act, Wall-E leaves the surface of the Earth and a couple of serious mis-steps deflate matters a little. For the first time, Pixar combine live action with their CG toons and not entirely successfully - despite a nifty gag that tries to tie the wildly divergent aesthetics together they never do gel. This overambition is the most serious fault in the film. The characterisation of several supporting characters falls far short of the richness afforded to the lead romance-bots but, again, this can be blamed on the shoot-for-the-stars approach to fleshing out Wall-E and Eve. How I wish every film I could criticise stumbled only through grand ambitions.

Go see Wall-E, take your kids and grandkids, and discuss the film with them afterwards. Just, please, nobody ask any questions about the carbon footprint of Pixar's immense super-computer render farm. I don't think anybody will like the answer.

Brendon Connelly 13 Jul 2008