WALL-E

I thought “Kung Fu Panda,” was it. THE most spectacular animated feature I had ever seen. My emergency supply of child-like credulity was almost exhausted as I watched that movie, complete with Kung Fu trained leopards, tigresses, turtles and of course, Pandas. Little did I know that Pixar had this neat little trick up their sleeve, called WALL-E; which succeeds at being three things at once: an enthralling animated film, a visual wonderment and a decent science-fiction story. That it achieves all this mostly without spoken dialogue is all the more astonishing.
Nearly 700 years in the future, Earth is an uninhabited wasteland. Pillars of trash dot the city skylines and the planet is surrounded by a garbage belt. Pollution, has driven all life into space. The robot WALL-E has remained behind, slowly doing his job day-in and day-out: collecting and compacting trash, then neatly stacking it. His only companion is an indestructible cockroach. It is lonely being WALL-E. He comes home at night to a big storage area, where he has gathered a few treasures from his scavengings of the garbage and festooned them with Christmas lights. He wheels into his rest position and goes into sleep mode. Tomorrow is another day: One of thousands since the last humans left the Earth and settled into orbit aboard gigantic spaceships that resemble spas for the fat and lazy.
Then, one day, WALL-E's ordered life is interrupted by the arrival of EVE, a robot sent by a spaceship for reasons revealed later in the film. She's sleeker and more advanced than WALL-E, who is visibly smitten by her. They form a fragile bond - until EVE unexpectedly shuts down. WALL-E first tries to revive her, but when that doesn't work, he is satisfied with protecting her until her spaceship returns. Unwilling to lose his new friend so quickly, WALL-E hitches a ride and soon learns the fate of those who abandoned Earth so many years ago.
One can guess, as soon as WALL-E starts, that it isn’t the average Pixar film. Instead of the vibrant colors we have become accustomed to, especially since the soft focused riot of vibrancy in Finding Nemo, this movie is suffused with browns. What is being shown, after all, is a post apocalyptic world where almost all life has ceased. The music is also atypical for a Disney animated movie. Instead of jovial tunes by Phil Collins or Alan Menken, we have excerpts from "Hello Dolly!!”, Louis Armstrong's "Le Vie en Rose," and "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (popularly known as the "Theme from 2001").
A lot of thought must have gone into the design of WALL-E, for whom I feel a curious affection. Consider this chunk of tin beside the Kung Fu Panda. The panda was all but special-ordered to be lovable, WALL-E, however, looks rusty and hard-working and plucky, and expresses his personality with body language and (mostly) with the binocular-like video cameras that serve as his eyes. Indeed, WALL-E has a heart to equal many of the Pixar/Disney releases to precede it, including Toy Story and Finding Nemo , but a sensibility that is more mature. This is one of those recent rare animated films that adults can attend without children in tow. And of course, central to WALL-E's narrative is the romance between the lead character and EVE. What's amazing about the way these two interact is that the animators are able to humanize them through tiny gestures. Neither has a real face and they rarely speak anything more than electronic approximations of their names, yet we grow to care for them as deeply as we might for any flesh-and-blood couple facing impossible odds in a live-action movie.
WALL-E involves ideas, it involves a little serious work on the part of the audience, and a little thought. It raises the bar and reminds viewers of the not-so-long-ago era in which every new computer animated film was a revelation. This movie possesses a vibrant heart and a solid story. The characters, despite being made of metal and having circuit boards for brains, are more human than the average protagonist in a summer blockbuster. Please do watch if you haven’t already. Resistance is futile.