Directors: Andrew Stanton
Actors: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, MacInTalk
Studio: Pixar Walt Disney Video
Release Date: November 18, 2008
Wall-E is a computer animated science fiction movie that also incorporates love, romance, friendship, along with courage and a whole bunch of other emotions usually not attributed to robots and packaged withing a children’s movie. Wall-E is a robot that we first see in his job of cleaning up the planet Earth after humans made a big mess of it (social commentary). While the planet is being cleaned the plan was that Earth’s inhabitants would be taking a luxury cruise on space ships for a short time during that task. It seemed though cleaning up Earth would not be as easy as once thought and that meant humanities trip in space would be a bit longer, and we pick up the story after 700 years on the ship. During these 700 years the last (or the last one we see) WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class) unit is not only continuing to clean up Earth, but has developed a personality over these hundreds of years. Well a personality and a sort of pack rat mentality as well, which leads him to collect a bunch of interesting things in his home. It is one of these things that becomes one of the center plot lines of the movie. We then come into contact with EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) who is back on Earth looking for some signs of vegetation so the humans can come home. WALL-E falls in love with EVE when he first sees her and while EVE completes her mission of finding that vegetation in WALL-E’s home he looks over her while she waits for the shuttle to come back to pick her up.
We are then taken back to the luxury cruise ship Axiom (with WALL-E hitching a ride) and EVE tries to fulfill her directive of bringing the plant back to the scanning area of the ship. This is where we first meet the humans, and how 700 years has de-evolved them to the point of hover chairs and high calorie diets coupled with lack of any exercise. When the audience is introduced to the humans all of the plot points come together, while WALL-E is on the ship. This eventually leads to some interesting action as the Captain wants the plant sample scanned so they can return to Earth…finally a few hundred years late.
This is one of those movies where I am actually at a loss at where to start, the whole movie was pretty deep, hitting every single scene right on stride. WALL-E is a movie that makes the most of every scene, all at the same time not giving the user all the information, just enough to make them think a bit. Like I said previously, the WALL-E Movie is a lot of things, and it does all of them well. It was an interesting start with no real dialog being used, but with such a strong story it was workable, but it was a risk the production team took that was met with success.
The voice acting for the humans is well done, and fits with the movie, but where the movie really shines in the sound department is with the robots and the score of the movie. So much so, that the sounds of the WALL-E Movie deserve to be talked about seperately. When a movie goes without dialog for a while, we can not be listening to nothing while the picture is shown, but at the same time your interest much be kept up as well. WALL-E does all of that, and the sounds of the robots were perfect. The score continues to feed into the flow of the movie and compliments the story perfectly.
There are a bunch of different robot characters, but I want to touch on a few of the major layer from both the robot end and the human end of things. WALL-E and EVE are the main characters of the film and we have already touched upon the emotional performance they put on. We have the rest of the robots on the ship which do pretty much all the tasks from cleaning, cooking, security, etc… Then we have the antagonist of the film in the form of the autopilot of the Axiom with a secret directive named, Auto. There is also a cockroach that is one of WALL-E’s friends on Earth which really gives us the insight into his personality and that this robot is not what he once was. The cockroach is also a nice carry along character that cements us to WALL-E’s past. For the first time in a Pixar film we have a live action character in Shelby Forthright the CEO for the Buy n Large Corporation, was an interesting take, as the CGI humans are not meant to be photo realistic. That brings us to the Captain who is not stupid, but rather lazy and in the rut of not only his life but that of the other captains before him. I think their take on the humans was a good choice, rather then what they had originally envisioned which we can see in the extras.
The CGI is top notch, this is Pixar after all. Some of the space ship scenes could easily have been something you could see on television being transmitted from Cape Canaveral. The interesting take on the obviously cartoon humans makes sure that the film stays light. The quality of the Blu Ray is wonderful and an absolute vision viewed on a television capable of 1080p.
WALL-e is not only my favorite science fiction movie of the year, it is one of my any genre favorite movies this year. I enjoyed it on all the different levels it takes you and there is a lot more to the movie that you are the viewer will enjoy, but as a reviewer I do not want to ruin by giving you too much. WALL-E does give a a dose of commentary on many different social issues including but not limited to consumerism, human evolution, greening (such a hot topic these days), but not in that annoying Al Gore way. It is rather more subtle. A children’s movie as a colorful CGI cartoon with an adorable robot and his antics, the subtle adult jokes, the social commentary it makes for the human race, and its thoughts on love and friendship turn a few movie conventions on their heels. Pixar as always throws us a few references to its other movies, a few classic Disney icons, and some Easter Egg sounds as well this time around. I also liked how when the credits started to roll it continued the story a bit in a storybook, sketch style to give the review a bit more feeling of completion. Not only is WALL-E a great movie, but the WALL-E 3 disc Blu Ray is a great package, where the extras and commentary kept up to the same level of the movie itself. If I had to keep a short list of Blu Ray discs this would be on it.
Extras:
WALL-E has the best set of extras I have ever watched. It has it all, deleted scenes, commentary, shorts…all top notch. There is also an extra digital copy that you can activate with a digital download code completing the 3 disc edition. Let me delve into a bunch of the extras below.
–Burn-E
Bad luck Burn-E, this was a short of one of the robots in the film. Was nicely done with them integrating a quick joke in the movie to then become the story for this short. Worked out well as it was integrated into the framework of the movie by giving us shot bits we had seen in the movie for reference. The little guy does accomplish his mission abeit briefly.
–Presto Animated Short
I thought this was really funny with two magic hats setting up this short for a lot of physical comedy. It is a magician and his bunny assistant, who is quite hungry, on stage with a carrot involved. My kids also loved this.
–Burn-E with Boards – picture-in-picture
Was interesting to see the storyboard and the finished product actually right next to see other. That way you can actually see how the storyboard makes it to the final film
- Behind the Scenes
This was great, my favorite behind the scenes of any movie so far. There is so much they talk about and why they did what they did with scenes, characters, look and feel of the movie. I thought all of the people that worked on the film had something interesting to say about the movie, where I was really interested to hear more. I really liked how they talk about how they originally wanted to portray the humans versus the final product. There was also some interesting scene choices that they decided to cut out, but after hearing the explanation on the flow of the film it worked. The evolution of the actual movie is laid out on a platter for us and it is mighty tasty to devour.
– Axoim Arcade
It was like my Atari 2600 found a worm hole and came to the future with some Wall-E games that could be played with a remote.
–Deleted Scenes
What I found interesting these are my favorite deleted scenes as Andrew Stanton talks about each one of them. Some are fully finished, some are partially finished, and some are in storyboard form.
–Sneak Peek: Wall-E’s Tour of the Universe
Just a quick take on what you can find out at the Wall-E website about Wall-E showing us our universe
– Bot FIles
We can get descriptions of some of the robots that we see in the film
–Wall-E’s Treasures and Trinkets
Wall-E running around on a blank background and performing some comedy for the crowd. Laughable for the children. The radio headphones piece was my favorite of this short. Wall-E can really move it.
-BnL Shorts
Interesting how they create a company which is a mockery of the big name bulk stores, and how they take over the world.
–Lots of Bots Storybook
This is an animated storybook, with artwork and rhymes that you would find in any good kids book that you could pick up, except with a robot arm that turns the virtual pages. I wonder if they actually made a real book of this as well as it would be a wonderful present.
– Disney BD Live
It has some chatting and video functionality to send between other Disney member friends as well as the standard movie challenge we have seen with many of the Blu Ray titles from various publishers.
You have heard a lot from me on this movie, but at the end, the only thing to say is buy it!
