WALL-E Is a Winner
WALL-E
Cast: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Sigourney Weaver, Fred Willard, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy
Directed by: Andrew Stanton
If I could see only one movie this summer, WALL-E would be my pick.
Yes, Batman fans, The Dark Knight has gotten all the hype, and Heath Ledger's performance is sparking talk of a posthumous Academy Awards nomination. But I'll take the title character's underdog charm over Christian Bale's brooding any day of the week. Plus, Pixar's best movie yet effortlessly blends humor, romance, and adventure while looking just as good as previous Pixar efforts.
The Story of WALL-E
WALL-E the robot (Ben Burtt) lives alone on an abandoned Earth. He spends his days collecting trash, compacting it into cubes, and stacking them into piles. Sometimes he finds interesting things such as a jewelry box (he tosses out the ring inside it) or a green plant (a rarity on a planet overrun by garbage). At night, he turns on the TV and watches his favorite scenes from Hello, Dolly! before going to sleep. Then the next day he gets up and does it all over again.
This monotony is broken by the arrival of a spaceship, which drops off a sleeker, more powerful robot named EVE (Elissa Knight). At first, she's so focused on her mission (and so quick to shoot at anything that disturbs her) that she won't give the smitten WALL-E the time of day. Eventually he wins her interest, but all too soon her controllers pick EVE up in their spaceship. What they don't realize is that they have a stowaway who'll start wreaking havoc the second he arrives at home base — setting "disturbed" robots free, interfering with the autopilot's manipulative schemes, and helping the ship captain (Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin) and his passengers get out of their unthinking dependency on computers and corporations.
Charlie, Meet WALL-E
WALL-E may be made of metal, but he's as plucky and comical as any underdog. When he hangs on to the spaceship as it lifts off from Earth, I think of Buster Keaton, clinging on for dear life. When WALL-E woos EVE by showing her a Rubik's Cube, a cigarette lighter, and other treasures, I'm reminded of Charlie Chaplin trying to impress a beautiful girl. Apart from Sigourney Weaver's ship computer, WALL-E and the other robotic characters share something else with Keaton and Chaplin: their actions speak louder than words. Until WALL-E's arrival at the space station, most of the "dialogue" consists of mechanical noises, the exception being a billboard recording of megacorporation Buy n Large's one-time CEO (Fred Willard, in Pixar's first blend of live-action and animation).
The excellent sound design, created by co-star Burtt, complements the sterling visual design common to Pixar's pictures, sometimes to satirical effect. The pairing of the song Put on Your Sunday Clothes with the overhead shots of WALL-E's skyscrapers of rubbish is just as pointed as the "Peace is Our Profession" sign outside the military base in Dr. Strangelove. And though director Andrew Stanton has a lot of elements to juggle, he still tells the story in an economical 98 minutes.
A Movie with a Message?
Some critics have derided WALL-E as left-leaning propaganda. It's true that if you're looking for a movie that encourages people to let corporations control their lives at the expense of the environment, then WALL-E will not be your cup of tea. On the other hand, WALL-E is not the animated version of An Inconvenient Truth; despite its storyline, the movie doesn't mention recycling or global warming even once. (This, predictably, has sparked criticism from the other end of the political spectrum.)
Here's my take: if you like comedy, enjoy romance, and relish good storytelling, you'll have a fun time watching WALL-E. And if you happen to leave the theater thinking, "Maybe I should go home and plant some trees," so much the better.
