Review: Wall-E

A few months back, I wrote a preview of all the upcoming summer movies, and in speaking about "Wall-E," I said that it was "going to forever change what filmmakers do with animation." Even this bold declaration does not do justice to how stunning this film is.

The premise, in case you haven't seen Disney's advertising blitz for the year, is that Wall-E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth class) spends his days scooting around an Earth 700 years in the future, that was left covered in so much trash that when Wall-E stacks the trash up in compacted boxes, they form towering skyscrapers. His only friend is a cockroach, and his joy is derived from collecting trash that catches his interest and stockpiling it. While cleaning, he zips around listening to a tape recording of "Hello, Dolly." Now, this first half hour alone is genius in the respect that Pixar is able to do something that no other company would get away with in this day and age: There is nearly zero dialogue, not even in the form of Wall-E's sounds, for the first third of the movie. This works like a charm, for by using physical comedy and a lot of heart before anything really even happens, Wall-E has already become another iconic Pixar character.

There are two important scenes in this first portion that lay the groundwork for the rest of the film. One involves Wall-E watching a transmission by the CEO of the Buy N' Large corporation (one suspects, the reason Earth was destroyed) about a luxury spaceship that all humans will be living on until the trash problem is fixed. The other involves Wall-E watching "Hello Dolly" one night and deciding that he wants to find someone to hold hands with (this is the most touching thing I have seen in a movie this year, beyond a doubt.)

One day, Wall-E's world is thrown into upheaval when a sleek, modern robot named Eve comes to Earth in search of something we do not figure out right away. Wall-E falls in love with her quickly, and one of the film's many fantastic sequences concerns Eve going into sleep mode and Wall-E trying to wake her up by going to absurd lengths to dote on her. Soon, Eve is called back to the spaceship, and Wall-E knows what he has to do: He follows her into space.

The film becomes less quietly touching and more chaotic here, but when the film enters the spaceship, it goes beyond being a stellar "family" movie and enters the realm of new-classic cinema, as well as being the most child-friendly future shock vision of the future ever made. In this future, humans are morbidly obese and have never actually looked at their own ship, owing to the luxury of hovering chairs eliminating the need to walk and computer screens to barrage them with sales pitches every day. Many of the robots on the ship befriend Wall-E and Eve, the most hilarious of which being a cleaning bot with OCD named M-O. The captain of the ship (Pixar regular John Ratzenberger) is the only human friend Wall-E and Eve have on the ship to complete Eve's mission, but someone (or something) doesn't want them to make it.

It is not often that a "cartoon" is this sincerely touching, but audiences of all ages will be moved. Hyperbolic though the following claim will seem, I honestly think this is the best love story since "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." The entire film is set around Wall-E's devotion to Eve, and his willingness to put everything on the line to make her happy, and to one day end up holding her hand. If you imagine John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler in robot form, you have an idea of how compulsively, blindly romantic Wall-E is, and how endearing he becomes.

I have not even touched on the animation, mostly because in this day and age, we are spoiled into assuming that Pixar will blow our minds. Even with that in mind, they have outdone themselves here. The scenes on the ship have an endless depth to them, and the smoggy Earth sequences are unsettling enough that in time, "Wall-E" just might end up being for the Disney set what "An Inconvenient Truth" was for adults. Maybe this is what we needed to stop global warming: A mascot.

I have always found it hilarious that critics seem to look down on animated films the same way that they look down upon video games; even if they review them well, they put them in a different category than "real" filmmaking. If a film with "Wall-E"s writing and creative prowess was re-shot for live actors, this film would sweep the Oscars. It's that good. Just like how "Toy Story" felt like the dawning of a new era from the first viewing onward, "Wall-E" has officially raised the bar for film as a whole.