WALL-E (2008)

Resources: IMDb * Wikipedia

Premise: A lonely robot falls in love and saves the world.

Directed by: Andrew Stanton

Stars: Ben Burtt, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Fred Willard

Review: Amazing. The film depicts a lonely robot, the last living thing on an abandoned and polluted Earth. Humanity abandoned the planet to its toxic nature, with the intention of returning once it has been reclaimed.

WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class) has evolved over that time to show care and compassion - he has a pet cockroach that he takes care of, he keeps small treasures that spark his curiousity, and he watches an old Hollywood musical, Hello Dolly. He still toils at cleaning mountains of trash, occasionally repairing himself from his long-deceased fellow units. While performing his duty one day, a ship lands and discharges a probe named EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) who is like nothing WALL-E has ever seen; he is instantly smitten with the fellow robot and sets out to introduce himself - albeit cautiously as she has a strong sense of self-preservation and nearly kills him.

WALL-E introduces EVE to his home and treasures, and when he shows her a plant that he found in an old refrigerator, her automatic programming takes over - she seizes the plant and calls her ship for recovery. WALL-E, distraught over possibly losing the only other living being he's met, follows her and hitches a ride on the ship. The pair return to a large spaceship which houses thousands of people and their caretaker robots. Humanity has evolved to have little bone mass, giant baby-shaped bodies, and have all their needs met by robots and little viewscreens through which they talk to each other - even when side-by-side. As WALL-E follows EVE, he encounters a couple of individuals, sparking their awareness of their surroundings.

While on board the starship - the Axiom - WALL-E encounters fellow robots, including M-O, a little cleaner droid, larger versions of himself called WALL-As (Axiom-class trash compactors), and other little droids that have malfunctioned. He also encounters an AI named AUTO that is the ship's autopilot and a little robot named GO-4 which serves him - these two serve as the primary antagonists in the third act of the movie. These encounters serve to highlight the plot, which moves from WALL-E proving his love to EVE serving her function as proving that Earth's biosphere has begun to move beyond the toxic levels that have dominated the past 700 years. AUTO and GO-4 work to prevent the Captain from returning to Earth, and nearly succeed, except for WALL-E's love and EVE's dawning awareness.

Many reviewers focus on the excellent first half of the movie, in which the only words spoken are electronic or from a viewscreen hundreds of years old. The robots do not talk, act, or look human - their actions show their personalities, from task-oriented to comical. The menace from AUTO and GO-4 are not overblown sinister like Maximilian from The Black Hole, nor are they humans in a shell like C-3PO from Star Wars. The move is to create a very sublime picture, with cute overtones and an arresting beauty.

The second half, occurring as it does on the Axiom, where humans are present and robots are everywhere, is manic and reminiscent of the quick-moving portions of other Pixar films (Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story 2 come to mind). Humans begin to be aware of their surroundings and each other, the love between EVE and WALL-E is expressed in a beautiful dance between the two, and the struggle over the future of humanity takes place.

The animation is nearly picture-perfect, the presentation is amazing, the story of WALL-E and his fight for love is great. The film wears its heart on its sleeve, from the first moment WALL-E notices the stars beyond the clouds to when EVE desperately tries to save him.

It's kid-friendly but the writing and art will clearly appeal to adults as well.

My only issue: Given that humans have apparently evolved to have lower bone density by living in outer space, how can they stand up in Earth's gravity?

Overall: Good