Jul 02 2008
WALL-E reviewed
WALL-E is easily the best animated film of the year, proving itself to be a more mature and well-rounded film than any of the year’s best so far, including Kung-Fu Panda. Pixar seems to have taken a whole new approach with WALL-E. They have always been a production company that likes to throw in a little something for the adults in the audience, while maintaining it’s integrity as a film for children.
WALL-E is the adventure of a small waste management robot that takes on a personality after it has been left behind on Earth. Humans have left the planet after covering it in garbage, leaving behind a small army of WALL robots that are in charge of cleaning up the mess, hoping that someday the planet will be able to support life again. WALL-E is the only robot left after hundreds of years. He and his Twinkie-eating cockroach friend seem to be the only life on Earth until EVE appears, a scouting robot hunting the galaxy for vegetation,
WALL-E naturally falls in love with the very sleek looking EVE, who seems to share a lot of characteristics with Apple products. Nonetheless, this is where their adventure begins. Soon afterwards the film becomes even more heavily politicized as after about an hour humans finally appear on the screen. They have grown fat and lazy from the ample technology at their disposal. They have no need to do anything for themselves or even interact with each other because they have allowed the very un “green” technology to rule their lives.
The first hour of the film is in near silence, at least sans-dialogue. Which is part of the brilliance of this film, it’s exciting and engaging even without dialogue, for both kids and adults. There are a lot of parallels here with Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, Chaplin’s first sound film. Though there is sound, it is largely used for comedy and not for propelling the story, that is largely done with the visual expressions. The animation is phenomenal for this reason; even with a cast largely comprised of robots Pixar has made a cast of expressive, engaging, lovable characters that may be among their best ensembles to date. Furthermore, for the first time they have included real people in portions of the animation, again, similar to Chaplin. Chaplin only had dialogue when it was heard through a medium to show the artificial nature of its engagement. Likewise, WALL-E only allows real people to be seen through TV screens. A rather exuberant Fred Willard portrays the CEO of the world’s biggest company Buy-N-Large, no coincidentally he is also president of the United States when the world finally becomes so polluted that it is uninhabitable. This heavy stylization is surely helped in no small way by the assistance of cinematographer Roger Deakins as a visual consultant.
WALL-E is a phenomenal film for both kids an adults, constantly winking to the older member of the audience with visual references to films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and it’s rather blatant political agenda. Whether or not you have kids to take to the cinema, go see WALL-E, it will surely win the Oscar for this years Best Animated Film, and it deserves much more than that for it’s stunning visuals.
