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 (070308) WALL-E the robot may be battered and
obsolete, but "WALL-E" the movie is a marvel of state-of-the-art
technological achievement -- perhaps the most brilliantly designed,
beautifully executed and technically accomplished feature yet from Pixar Animation Studios, the company responsible for more than a
decade of computer-generated milestones, from "Toy Story" in 1995 to
"Ratatouille" in 2007.
Pixar's boldness has advanced with its achievements in special
effects. "Ratatouille" required audiences to identify with that most
hated of mammals-a rat; "WALL-E" asks moviegoers to find enjoyment
in a story that spends its first half hour on an all but dead future
Earth of trash mountains and rotting skyscrapers, inhabited only by
the title rusty robot and its (his?) trusty sidekick, a cockroach.
(WALL-E and the cockroach function as a sort of perverse parody of
Pinocchio -- another manufactured character who longs for "human"
connection -- and Jiminy Cricket, the beloved companions from an
earlier Disney release.)
R2-D2 and Number 5 from "Short Circuit" proved that viewers will
respond to cute robots, so the film's real challenge was not in
"humanizing" its title character but in holding viewers through its
brave opening act, which is free of dialogue except for the bleeps,
whirrs and whistles of the robot, and the voices from a battered
videotape of the 1969 musical "Hello, Dolly!" that is the lonely
WALL-E's prized possession. (The lyrics, "Put on your Sunday
clothes, there's lots of world out there" provide an ironic
soundtrack for WALL-E's robot dreams.)
This opening act is infused with a melancholy that may be
unprecedented in an animated film from co-producers Pixar and Disney
-- and, in fact, is unusual for a live-action commercial "adult"
film. As an evocation of a ruined Earth, the G-rated "WALL-E" makes
the recent PG-13-rated "I Am Legend" look like the cheap, juvenile
video game that it essentially is.
To find a closer cousin to "WALL-E," one needs to go back to the
cautionary eco-disaster science-fiction films of the 1970s and '80s,
such as "The Quiet Earth," "Silent Running" and "No Blade of Grass."
The way in which WALL-E pointlessly carries out his trash-collection
programming even centuries after humanity has vanished suggests the
wistful 1950 Ray Bradbury short story "There Will Come Soft Rains,"
about a futuristic automated house that continues to perform its
domestic functions even after nuclear war has wiped out the
population.
Of course, as one expects from a Pixar/Disney release, "WALL-E"
ultimately proves to be a self-consciously uplifting film, with a
happy ending. It's filled with comedy and slapstick, with "An
Inconvenient Truth" message. Even so, "WALL-E," like "Ratatouille,"
probably will be one of Pixar's less impressive successes at the box
office -- a likelihood that makes the movie's production all the
more laudable. (The company obviously is aware that "Wall-E"
represents a marketing challenge; the slogan in the current "WALL-E"
print ads -- "The Most Fun You'll Have at the Movies This Summer!"
-- is not only misleading and uninformative but lame.)
Written and directed by one of Pixar's founding animators, Andrew
Stanton (also the credited director of "Finding Nemo"), "WALL-E" has
its title "Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class" robot
continuing to collect and compact trash some 700 years after the
last Ark-like spaceships have left the apparently hopelessly
polluted Earth.
With his expressive binocular eyes and comical tank-tread
terpsichore, WALL-E is a successor to the silent comedy tradition of
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton -- a kinship that is reinforced
when his solitude is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the
Angelina Jolie of robots, the hot but dangerous EVE, a sleek, highly
advanced Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator probe from outer
space. WALL-E, of course, is smitten. (When EVE eventually
acknowledges WALL-E, film buffs may think of the famous moment when
Virginia Cherrill recognizes Chaplin at the end of "City Lights.")
When EVE returns to its (her?) mothership with WALL-E as a hapless
stowaway, the pantomime-with-sound-effects portion of the film ends.
"WALL-E" becomes a more traditional Pixar adventure-comedy when
WALL-E meets the humans of the future: Bloated consumers who float
about their ship on gravity-defying robot lounge chairs that provide
them with an endless supply of unhealthy processed food treats and
an array of ever-changing must-have product choices. The president
(Fred Willard) who authorized this mission was not, apparently, an
elected official but a corporate CEO. "Stay the course," he tells
his passengers, in a recorded message about "the 700th anniversary
of the five-year cruise" that is one of the movie's more pointed
references to current political fecklessness.
For me, "WALL-E" becomes less interesting after the human characters
are introduced. (These include the ship's captain, voiced by "Curb
Your Enthusiasm" regular Jeff Garlin.) The movie's critique of
current American culture is not exactly subtle, and the story's
action-packed progression toward its inevitable inspirational climax
is unnecessarily prolonged. Still, the inventiveness of Stanton and
his army of artists never flags; the movie's never-ending series of
visual astonishments are nothing less than awe-inspiring.
There is real poignancy in his story, which is both a space-age
adventure and a classic romance. Each is deeply compelling. The
result is a wondrous work of the imagination and, to date, the
year’s best film.
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