WALL-E Film Review
Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures Come Up with Latest Masterpiece
The latest in Pixar's collection of inventive and infallible blockbusters, WALL-E is an amazing family film, the final product of over a decade of story and animation development.
WALL-E tells the clever and humorous tale of the only remaining functioning cleaner robot named WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), one of millions of robot drones left on Earth to clean up the earthly mess left behind by humanity in its never-ending quest for consumerism.
Wall-E Plot
It's 700 years in the future. Mankind has had no choice but to take to the stars, leaving Earth behind, now uninhabitable. Their plan is to live in space, until such a time when the planet has had a chance to be cleaned by automated drones, and lush vegetation is able to grow again.
The plan has failed. Due to the sheer amount of pollution and garbage littering our world, the robots have all broken down after many centuries, save one. We meet WALL-E, the sole remaining working drone, who goes about his daily task, having never been told to stop his original mission. After 700 years, WALL-E has developed a few quirks, namely a colorful personality, and an insatiable curiosity. We follow his cute antics, until the arrival of a sentry ship and its own drone EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) sent to scan for any viable sign of vegetation, signaling the possibility of humans finally returning to their home world. The film explores the budding relationship between WALL-E and EVE, and their dealings with the latest generation of earthly survivors on board their gigantic mother ship.
Ben Burtt: Sound Genius
First credit in this film review (sorry Mr. Stanton, a good cast always deserves another mention!) goes to sound designer Ben Burtt, whose resume reads like a what's what of Hollywood's memorable sci-fi sound effects. To name a few: the infamous Darth Vader breathing sound, light sabers, the voice of R2D2, and most technological sounds in any of the Star Wars canon.
In WALL-E, Burtt "voices" the titular character, and is responsible for the majority of non-human males voices in the film. Through endless hours of experimenting with a variety of commonly found objects,
Burtt has inventively come up with a distinct sound for each character, adding to their presence on screen.
Burtt and director Andrew Stanton pull a veritable tour de force with this project, by having the first third of the film go virtually without any human dialogue, an impressive feat given today's fickle audience.
Keeping with the Pixar Style in WALL-E
As with many Disney/Pixar films of years past, the film is replete with inside jokes, clever homages to pop culture icons and even past Disney films. One cannot look at the EVE character and not think of the recent Apple iMac desktop computer, with its sleek and smooth white plastic exterior. By the halfway mark of the film's running time, over a dozen Apple references could be found.
Again here, Pixar’s signature touch of bringing such life and expression to CGI characters, makes this film an essential moral tale. Contrary to the more commonly found Disney teen or child-oriented fare, WALL-E truly appeals to people young and old, and inarguably deserves the best Animated Feature Oscar statuette, next February.
Trivia: Look for comedic veteran Fred Willard, who portrays the film’s only live-action character. He portrays a key figure in the overall storyline. Sorry, to say more would spoil the story!A Solid 9 out of 10
