This heartwarming, lovable
film from 2008 stars a garbage compactor named Wall-E who lives on a destroyed
planet called Earth. We realize he is a
living product of the megastore BnL (Buy N Large). His days are spent cleaning up portions of
the area he lives in. He is always
finding objects which are interesting to him including a woman’s bra which he
proceeds to place over his eyes. He even
finds a ping pong ball/racket amongst the trash. As he begins to play with this, he accidentally
and repeatedly hits himself in the eye with the ball.
After his compacting, he
retreats to his “house” with his cockroach companion to watch scenes from Hello Dolly, wishing for a love to call
his own. You feel pain in your own heart
watching his sad eyes gaze upon the lovers in the musical. At one point, he looks down at his little
robotic hands (if you will) and links his fingers together. He has recorded the song on a tape he keeps
near his chest, which seems symbolic of what his heart tells him. He rolls outside and looks up at the sky
while playing the song from Hello Dolly.
One day while cleaning up
Earth, he sees a moving red dot and decides to follow it. We soon after see many red dots which appear
to be a UFO of sorts in the sky. It
drops off a shiny white robot and leaves the area. He almost immediately falls in love with this
unknown robot, despite knowing nothing about it, and also despite the fact that
it keeps shooting in Wall-E’s direction.
They eventually meet and after a couple of repeated attempts, he builds
up the nerve to begin talking. She
introduces herself as EVE although he pronounces it as Eva, which she seems to
love.
During an escape mission
from a cloud of dangerous dust and who knows what else, Wall-E brings EVE to
his place. This is a fantastic scene as
he shows her everything he has collected over the years. He enthusiastically brings his items over to
her, and she quickly figures out what each item is for. She solves a Rubik’s cube and turns on a
light bulb. An absolutely hysterical
scene gives us Wall-E handing EVE a cassette, which she pulls the string almost
completely out of. Wall-E puts his arms
over his head in distress and screams, as he grabs the tape from her and puts
it back together.
We soon find out that her “directive”
is to find a species from planet Earth and return it to her residence. Wall-E had found a beautiful green plant in a
boot which he had decided to keep. As
soon as she saw this, her senses kicked in and a laser popped out, grabbing the
plant as her eyes and soul disappeared.
This film manages to make the following scene both heart wrenching and
humorous as we see Wall-E trying to encourage her to come back to life while
protecting her.
From here, we see many
antics taking place as Wall-E hops aboard a space ship to find out where EVE is
from and to save her. Without giving
much more of the film away, the plant is the saving grace. As long as they have the plant in the
capsule, they will know that life can exist on Earth. Every scene which follows is a captivating and
wonderful one, as you quickly find yourself emotionally attached to each of the
characters…except maybe AUTO, an evil computer who tries to take over the Captain’s
duties to prevent the inhabitants from returning to Earth.
The voice cast is
brilliant. Wall-E and M-O are voiced by
Ben Burtt who has directed a few documentaries and worked in the sound
department for many films including this year’s Lincoln and five of the six Star
Wars films (Star Wars connection
right there for ya, people). The lovely
but temperamental EVE is voiced by Elissa Knight who also gave us Tia in the
2006 hit Cars. The determined captain is played by Jeff
Garlin who has appeared in many television shows and films including this year’s
ParaNorman and voicing Buttercup in
2010’s Toy Story 3. John Ratzenberger makes his annual appearance
in the Disney/Pixar film as the appropriately named human John. The lady who John meets and is immediately
attracted to is Mary, voiced by Kathy Najimy (remember Hocus Pocus?). Fred Willard
portrays the CEO of BnL known as Shelby Forthright and Sigourney Weaver voices
the ship’s computer.
Wall-E is
directed by Andrew Stanton. Stanton has
directed for Finding Nemo and John Carter among others, and is
currently in the middle of filming for Finding
Nemo 2. The film was written by
Stanton, Pete Docter, and Jim Reardon.
Docter has directed for Up and
Monsters Inc. Reardon wrote for this year’s hit Wreck-It Ralph. The soundtrack is absolutely beautiful
infusing a couple of delightful songs from Hello
Dolly which are “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Only Takes A Moment.” We also hear the beautiful rendition of “La
Vie En Rose” by Louis Armstrong. The BnL
song is even a ton of fun, but my favorite off the soundtrack plays during the
credits which is “Down To Earth” by Peter Gabriel.
FIVE FACTS:
1.) Ben
Burtt voiced most of the robots in the film.
Therefore, when Andrew Stanton met with Ben Burtt originally, he told
him “I need you to be 80% of my cast!”
2.) This
was the first Disney/Pixar film to be nominated for six Academy Awards. The only other animated film to earn that
many nods would be Disney’s 1991 classic Beauty
and the Beast.
3.) The
working title for Wall-E was Trash Planet.
4.) AUTO’s
secret directive is A113, which is an inside joke of the animation
department. We see this code during
every Disney/Pixar film, as well as a large number of Disney films.
5.) Wall-E’s
eyes were inspired by a pair of binoculars given to Andrew Stanton while he was
watching an Athletics vs. Red Sox game.
He missed the entire first inning due to being distracted by these
binoculars.
So I understand the message they are trying to get across
to people in this film. However, there
is one issue which I have. Did you
notice that all of the people are overweight and panic if they fall out of
their portable chairs? I guess they
couldn’t have made all of the inhabitants skinny but I don’t think the message
of obesity had to come across the screen as strongly and as often as it
did. However, I was willing to overlook
this flaw due to my love of every other aspect of the film.
My favorite scene is hard to choose because they are all
so endearing. My choice would likely be
when EVE and Wall-E are “dancing” out in space while John and Mary excitedly
watch. I also love that Wall-E
introduces himself to everyone, even when he is in pain. It is rare that my favorite character of a
film is the main star, but that is absolutely the case in this one. Wall-E tugs at my heartstrings and melts my
soul. He is one of my favorite Disney
characters in general right up there with Ariel from The Little Mermaid and Maximus from Tangled.
Wall-E is
beautiful and sheer enjoyment. Kids will
enjoy the characters and adults will enjoy the storyline and depth of the
characters’ feelings. Personally, this
is one of my favorite Disney/Pixar collaborations. This is sheer gold and I hope they continue
to release films of brilliance and genius such as this one.
My
Rating: 5/5
Eeeeeee…va?
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