WALL*E
July 13, 2008
Blending everything from “E.T.” and “City Lights” to “Short Circuit”, “2001” and “An Inconvenient Truth”, Pixar and director Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo”) create a movie both original and familiar in its Sci-Fi homage structure. Our hero for this latest box office and critical gem, from the greatest minds in animation, is a rusty little trash compactor named WALL*E, who roams around a deserted Earth picking up garbage, centuries after the last humans abandoned the polluted planet for a life of sloth and easy consumption aboard a hovering spaceship. WALL*E’s life isn’t too spectacular, but he does get a joy out of the knickknacks he finds and collects in the trash piles, especially an old videotape of the Hollywood musical “Hello, Dolly!”, but when a slick environmental robot named EVE comes to the planet to scan for potential plant life, our man falls in love, and in that, believe it or not, a movie that starts out like a Spielbergian mix of “I Am Legend” and “E.T.”, with no dialogue and an incredibly heavy message about pollution and consumerist waste, becomes the most charming romantic comedy in years. The film has its thrills, especially when the robots leave Earth for the hovering spacecraft, transporting a tiny bud that may be the key to sustaining life, but the heart (tremendous as always for a family friendly Pixar film) lies in the impossibly cute pairing of these two completely different, wordless characters, proving that even the smallest amount of dialogue (as in “The Last Laugh”), handled with visual splendor and pitch perfect timing, can bring about a wellspring of storytelling possibilities. The year is only halfway through, but we’ll be hard pressed to find another film with such visual genius and emotional depth; another masterpiece from a studio batting perfect in the category.
by Adam Suraf