WALL-E
2008
Directed by: Andrew Stanton
Story by: Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Jim Reardon
Starring: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin
The latest offering from the Disney/Pixar team is yet another triumph of digitally animated movies. No surprise there, really. Since Toy Story in 1995, Brad Bird’s studio has rarely missed a beat. Some of the pictures are better than others, of course, but with the exception of Cars (which I’ve never seen) I can’t think of a single Disney/Pixar film I haven’t enjoyed, and once again WALL-E does not disappoint.
Having tackled subjects such as family bonding (Finding Nemo, The Incredibles), life-long friendship (Toy Story, Monsters, Inc.) and finding your purpose (Ratatouille), the House That Bird Built have set their iMacs to an even more time honored story focus: true love. WALL-E follows the adventures of the last eponymous robot on Earth, who for 700 years has been cleaning up garbage. The planet’s become a toxic wasteland incapable of supporting all life, save cockroaches. Or so it seems until WALL-E finds the last plant in the universe and a probe robot from human survivors named EVE comes to retrieve it. WALL-E falls desperately in love with the sleek, smart and deadly EVE, following her back to space and setting off the events that save humanity.
The story is fun, a little predictable but engaging for all ages. I especially liked the subtle reversal of usual male/female roles. WALL-E is scruffy, bumbling and significantly weaker than his lady love, and she takes on the protector role. Strange that a strong, smart and unpatronizing female lead has to come in the form of a robot. But anyway…as with previous Pixar endeavors, the real draw here is the technical stuff, the new advancements in animation and digital movie making that Pixar always sets the bar for. This time around they’ve worked not only on amazing new texturing and lighting techniques, creating scenes on Earth and in space that at times appear photo realistic, but have done great new things with sound. There is very little real dialogue in WALL-E, most of the robots being vocalized by cleverly designed mechanical and digital sounds. WALL-E himself was “voiced” by Ben Burtt, storied sound designer of Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Rather than being grating and unrelatable, the machine characters of WALL-E come alive through their distinct and expressive audio. The titular character is all the more endearing for his unworded R2-D2 like coos.
And we can’t forget the short films, a long-standing tradition of the Pixar franchise. Gods bless DVDs for making them available anytime we please. For WALL-E we get a double feature, with the theatrical short Presto! about a haphazard stage magician and his hungry rabbit who makes some new additions to the act, and a new original short BURN-E, telling the tale of a robot aboard the human ship that runs parallel to WALL-E. Both are cute, clever and greatly entertaining, again keeping with Pixar’s tradition of quality. The DVD also has a great documentary feature on the sound engineering behind WALL-E which I found enlightening. Great purchase all around, you won’t be sorry to add it to the collection.
