Alecc B. on "WALL-E"

Visions of the future have always varied throughout the history of film. We've had the bright and happy visions like in The Fifth Element. We've also seen the dreary side in films such as Blade Runner, Children Of Men, and The Matrix. 

Disney and Pixar have now brought us their own creative image of the future with their latest work of art, WALL-E. While a joy to watch, this film is also very bleak at times, which is a surprise coming from the family-friendly studios. I will say that it is a welcome surprise.

PLOT

Hundreds and hundreds of years into the future, humans have left Earth, a planet that is no longer a place to live. The land is a desert, a wasteland of nothing but garbage and robots that have been powered off, except for one. WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, E-Class) was not turned off before the humans evacuated, so he's been tending to his daily duties all alone for about 700 years. 

His lonely days end when a spaceship arrives, bringing Eve, an advanced robot who has come to survey the land and report back to the humans. But, both Eve and WALL-E get more than they bargained for when they meet. 

ACTING

I usually just list the actors who gave the cartoon characters a voice, but I have to note how Pixar easily manages to make us forget that we're watching a cartoon. You invest in every character even more than most live action films that come out these days. Here is the cast, including one actor who was actually live and in person on-screen:

WALL-E: Ben Burtt
Eve: Elissa Knight
Captain: Jeff Garlin
Shelby Forthright: Fred Willard (Live Action)
John: John Ratzenberger
Mary: Kathy Najimy
Ship's Computer: Sigourney Weaver
WRITING & DIRECTING

Andrew Stanton, the man behind Finding Nemo, impresses once again as the man behind the pen and vision. I'll go as far as to say that WALL-E is the E.T. of Pixar films. The story is simple but engages you with it's subject matter and adorable main character. There is very little dialogue throughout the film, and that works just fine with this project.

Visually, Pixar always pleases. The animation on display is beyond amazing, it's unbelievable how, uh, believable everything looks. Except for the humans in space. That might be the only problem I had with WALL-E. I didn't like how the humans evolved from real people to fat cartoon characters. I get what they were trying to do and it was amusing for a minute or so, but I would have preferred that the entire film stayed animated. That is a very minor problem, though, compared to how fantastic the rest of the film is.

Everything, including the excellent music provided by Thomas Newman, was pretty much flawless in execution. My favorite scene is the dance in space with Eve and WALL-E. The end credits continue the Pixar tradition of enjoying their films literally from beginning to end.

WALL-E is easily the best film to have come out this summer, if not the whole year. That looks to change in a couple of weeks when The Dark Knight comes out. Until then, we can take comfort in the fact that there are still studios in the film industry, like Pixar, that are capable of making us forget about our problems for a couple of hours.

Overall Review: ***1/2 stars

Best Line:

Burtt: EVE-AH! EVE-AH!