Movie Review: WALL-E (49/50 Stars)

This review contains spoilers. If the ending of this movie is important to you blah blah blah etc etc [fill in standard disclaimers here]

It's been interesting talking to other people about WALL-E. It's a really polarizing movie; you either love it or you hate it. Well, I love it. I think this is probably the best Pixar film yet and to be honest all kid-ness aside was probably one of the best movies of the year. The only reason this movie doesn't also get a 1/1 is because I've only seen it twice so I can't stick my neck out for it that far.

All that said, it's not the easiest movie to watch. WALL-E comes down on our current state of civilization pretty hard. It puts a pretty thin veil over it's implications that we are overweight, wasteful, and self-absorbed.

But while it rails against our current state and our likely future state it holds out the most optimistic message I've seen in mass media in years.

It's a movie about a robot who has effectively turned into a human. WALL-E has been collecting our trash on an abandoned Earth for 700 years. It's a pretty bleak back drop. Like I said, it's not an easy movie to watch. Along the way he picked up a bit of a glitch. He collects old trash he finds interesting.

Really the rest of the movie revolves around which trash WALL-E likes to pick up. Sure there are some interesting trinkets and broken toys but largely he collects the things we are throwing out because we've forgotten that singing is fun and dancing is something that people do when they fall in love with each other.

Soon enough Eve makes her grand entrance. Since WALL-E has been reading up, he knows how to handle the situation. Sort of. He runs into that same awkward wall we all run into when we want someone to like us. But he is endearing and since he has the sense to preserve life when he finds it he and Eve end up on their way to fixing the world's problems.

WALL-E chases Eve back to the Axiom (the mothership if you will) and promptly manages to run amok left and right. It's adorable watching him try to clean things up. He helps people back in their chairs, he waves to people, sings, etc.

In the process he starts spreading humanity around as he goes. People who got knocked out of their chair notice that there is an actual physical world around them. He waves to other robots and they all start to pick it up. Even the big ol' trash robots in the bottom of the ship have picked it up by the time WALL-E gets there.

Eventually WALL-E gets the plant Eve was carrying around up to the captain who is probably the most self sufficient person on the ship. He actually does things like announce the weather every day which is a lot more than anyone else does.

The arrival of The Plant gets the captain researching Earth with the talking computer. It gives us one of the most romantic scenes I've seen in a movie in a long time. WALL-E figures out in space he can fly around with a fire extinguisher. He and Eve "dance" around the outside of the ship together while the computer explains dancing to the Captain. I know, written down it sounds lame but it's not, I promise.

At the end of the day the captain has to fight the auto pilot to get every body back to earth so they can start growing pizza plants again (why he thinks you can grow a pizza plant is still beyond me). The use of the space odyssey music when the captain finally gets out of his chair and stands up is classic.

Really what makes WALL-E so awesome is how incredibly optimistic it is. It fully acknowledges that we have big problems but it really does assert that we can solve them with really simple things like smiling and waving. It reminds you that falling in love means wanting to hang around each other and hold hands and dance, even if the person is in a temporary coma. And it does it with two main characters who can't possibly speak more than 10 unique words between them and whose only emotive features are eyes.

So there you have it. John Lasseter (the director) deserves recognition up there with Spielberg and Kurosawa.


Writer: M













Editor: G










Supporting Staff - Claire, Scott










OK, so unrelated to the rest of the movie the credits to this film are awesome. They start off with a backdrop of semi-animated cave paintings showing the Axiom passengers getting off and starting to rebuild things. Slowly over the course of the credits the background art morphs to Egyptian hieroglyphs, then Renaissance paintings, then impressionist, then Van Gogh. It ends with Atari style art of WALL-E and Eve. The assertion they are making is that computer graphics is the latest artistic technique and is just as valid as any other art form humanity has worked out. That would be incredibly arrogant if you hadn't just finished watching a movie that is a perfect proof of concept for that idea. I hope Pixar continues to make films my kids will watch and I will enjoy long into the future.