Wall-E World

Pixar is a good film company. Well, I guess I should say "division" or something now that they are owned by Disney, but their ownership by the Mouse hasn't hurt their product at all. In fact, their only misstep, 2006's completely horrible "Cars" (well, horrible unless you think that Larry the Cable Guy is the funniest man on the planet, in which case you might be slightly horrible), was actually the last film they produced before getting bought out by Disney.

Pixar has had me ever since 1995's "Toy Story," but their work has gotten so much better than that. "A Bug's Life," while not nearly as good as some of their other work, is still a competent, amusing flick, "Toy Story 2" at times surpassed its predecessor (although maybe I'm biased because I love all of the "Empire Strikes Back" jokes) and "Monsters Inc." is still one of the funniest and original animated movie I've ever seen (the funniest, however, is "The Emperor's New Groove").

Then came the big one: "Finding Nemo." While the film is a bit overrated (for all of its humor and the cool animation of the water, it is essentially a well done buddy movie--with fish), Pixar's most popular offering is still a good view. It was the film after this one, however, that makes Pixar a studio that I can still get really excited about: "The Incredibles." You see, with the exception of the kiddie-fodder Cars, The Incredibles is the first Pixar movie to actually delve into themes, making and exploring them better than much of the live action film world. In addition to this, it is also really funny, well-acted and very well-written, perfectly paced and all in all one of my two favorite animated movies ever (the other being the aforementioned "Groove").

After Cars came "Ratatouille," which both continued the thematic layering of The Incredibles and was Pixar's best rendered film (not best, it just had the best animation). And now comes "Wall-E," and it aims to impress.

[very mild premise spoilers ahead] The movie opens on an earth several hundred years in the future. It is an abandoned, lonely place, devoid of all human life (and almost all animal life, save a cockroach). Why? Because humans accumulated so much garbage that the non-biodegradable stuff forced everything else out. The humans (no word on the animals) went off to space on a giant space station, leaving trash cleaning robots to clean up earth so that the humans can return.

In fact, the only sentient being on the entire planet is Wall-E, the only trash cleaning robot who hasn't broken down and probably the only one to somehow evolve a personality. It is his personality and the personality of his love interest that carry the movie. That's right. Much in the way that Ratatouille had us not minding the thought of a rat in the kitchen, in Wall-E you actually care about the romantic relationship between two robots.

This is, remarkably, mostly pulled off in two ways: sound (not dialogue) and movement/expression. Ben Burt, the genius sound editor behind all of the Star Wars and Indy movies, conjured up a gargantuan sound bank for this feature--one big enough so that all of the robots even remotely featured in the flick have a distinct personality, just based on the squeaks, beeps and whirrs they emit. You can tell when a robot is sad or happy based on the sounds it makes (and most of it is computerized or mechanical sounds, and the little that isn't has been made to sound that way) and the subtle movements of its body. They rarely ever cheat on the robots' bodies either, which makes it even more amazing.

When I say cheat, I mean that they don't make the robots' metal parts curve unnaturally. In fact, nothing that any of the robots do looks like something a robot couldn't do. That, in my opinion, is the biggest testament to the success of the film: the movie gets you to care about and like and sympathize with machines, but they don't do it in any way that compromises the robots' machinery.

In addition to the primary love story, there is a great underlying theme to this film: isolation. While the primary love story shows the basic principle that loneliness is good for no one, when the humans in the movie do show up (halfway through the film, leaving the first half to two robots and a eerily yet wonderfully rendered future earth), the movie has some great things to say about self imposed isolation. All of the humans are fat, don't walk anywhere (they have hoverchairs), and they spend all day at a holographic computer console that constantly is in their field of vision. In becoming so immersed with technology--even with the interactivity of technology--they have lost the necessities of real relationships, of life not in front of a computer or on a cell phone. Touch, initiative, experience, all of these things have been forgotten by man. What a relevant message for today's world, where some people get antsy if they haven't texted anyone for too long.

There is, however, one complaint that I have about Wall-E. It's small, but it really bothered me.

At one point in the movie, a corporate CEO/U.S. President (can you see where this is going?) shows up to proclaim that the earth, regardless of the planned cleanup, will never again be habitable. He then proceeds to make a dumb, short speech about how we should "stay the course" and "not try to fix this mess we made." Wow. "Get Smart," just when I thought you couldn't get any more heavy-handed than having the President reading children's books to kids on the eve of a nuclear attack, Wall-E shows you up.

Again, while I have no problem with political satire, the above scene is A) not funny, B) not original and C) completely unnecessary. This movie could have been the most political thing in the world. It could have made fun of obesity, but it chose not to. It could have been a preachy environmental flick, but it took the high ground. In short: the movie could have had an agenda, but it chose not to cheapen itself by being dated or whiny. Except this one scene. The rest of the movie has an entirely timeless feel about it, but this one scene was so unbearably preachy and uncalled for that it just nagged at me slightly for the rest of the movie. So unnecessary. But fortunately, only one blemish on an otherwise great film.

There is more I could say about this movie. The score is excellent, it's funny in a sweet sort of way, it's beautifully rendered and so much more. But you should just go see it. And see it while it's still in theatres; it will look even better there.