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 In cinemas Thursday [G]
Director: Andrew Stanton
Runtime: 98mins
If anyone needs to be convinced that Pixar remain the best computer-generated animation house in the world, Wall-E should silence any doubters. In a year that featured the energetic but largely superficial Kung Fu Panda, Wall-E has surpassed all other efforts in terms of look, feel and substance. Director Andrew Stanton stated he just wanted to make a robot love story with this film, and he has succeeded both with that and a lot more besides.
Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth Class) is the last robot of his kind on earth, left behind to clean up a significant environmental mess while humanity drifts about the galaxy for 700 years. He’s lonely, developing friendships with bugs and repeatedly watching the Michael Crawford musical Hello, Dolly!, from which he develops a yearning for romance. This appears in the form of Eve (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a sleek iPod-like robot sent to earth to look for signs of renewed life. When Eve is recalled to the human mothership, Wall-E follows, coming into contact with what humanity has become – corpulent layabouts so addicted to their junk food and heads-up displays they don’t even look at one another while talking. Triggering something of a mini-robot revolution (at least amongst the defectives confined to the workshop) Wall-E and Eve then try to deliver a tiny Earth-born seedling to the ship’s captain (voiced by Jeff Garlin), but find their efforts frustrated by a decidedly HAL 9000-like navigation system. Humans and robots – there’s good ‘uns and bad ‘uns in both camps it seems…
Thanks in no small part to the amazing sound work by Ben Burtt (sound designer for the droids in Star Wars), the fact that Wall-E is nearly dialogue free for much of it’s length never seems to matter. The robots are invested with such expressiveness and emotion via their design, movement and noises, they really do seem more relatable than the human characters. Humour is plentiful as Wall-E romances Eve, careening into sticky and perilous situations like a microwave-sized Buster Keaton. Some lovely reflective moments also underscore the cute appeal of the robots, such as when the tank-tracked Wall-E discovers he can ‘fly’ with Eve in space thanks to a fire extinguisher. It’s a very sweet sequence in a film that contrasts the likeability and courage of Wall-E with the destruction wrought by selfish, consumption-obsessed humanity. The photo-realism of the Earth-based sequences further acts to drive home the environmental warning of the film (almost with blunt accusation), but thankfully Wall-E is around to remind people of what they’ve ignored for too long.
As a family film it works – kids will love the robots – and as a thoughtful sci-fi film it also succeeds. It’s beautiful to look at, is exciting, funny and sentimental in equal amounts, and deserves its place amongst Pixar’s – and possibly even the genre’s – best films.
*****
TOPHER HEALY
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