Review of WALL·E (2008) by Thomas W — 11 Mar 2014

When I first watched this film I was surprised by the unique approach this film took. It used a lot of atmosphere yet very little dialogue and few characters. This film has great pacing and uses it's subtly to its advantage. The story is strait forward and although the climax feels somewhat forced in, it does allow for a great dramatic ending.

There is an environmental message in the film about some Walmart/Coca Cola/Mc Donalds company that is such a powerful and corrupt monopoly that they influence politics, allowing them to pollute the world and not giving a crap about anything but money- you know, like in real life. Overall it does create a history to the story and why things are the way they are. There still is some mystery behind the past because only certain parts of the history are cut and past in certain parts of the film, so even if you do peace things together it leaves gaps but still makes perfect sense. Of all the 'crappy futures' that films and videogames make, this seem very realistic. It's more of humanity screwing itself over because of human natures and what modern trends would do if they got out of control. All the other films think that everything is a half-life warzone, here it's either no life at all or the spaceship where everyone thinks they are good and living off Walmart/Coca Cola/Mc Donalds products. And judging by how fat everything is today, this film got that right.

Wall-E is pretty much a box with wheels, but is A-DOR-A-BLE. His curiosity and loneliness makes him so innocent but enough of a troublemaker to make him interesting and realistic. I also like how old and weak he is, because this would make him handicapped in such a futuristic world yet still he can be heroic.

Eve is the first futuristic technology that appears in the film. Pretty much designed to be a weapon or being able to defend herself, she is the exact opposite of the frail and old Wall E, which is great for the film.

In a way the 'romance' between the robots, which doesn't make much sense in theory, is mostly about Eve's evolution throughout the film. The chemistry between the two robots is realistic in a way, it takes a lot of time for Eve just to identify that Wall E is not a threat. It is by no way a 'love at first sight' deal, (well maybe it is for Wall E) but the relationship derails in the film. I love the scene where Eve is legitimately pissed off at Wall E in the elevator, not a lot of romance films would attempt this idea.

The villain is pretty weak, just your typical evil computer that have full control of the tech in the ship. It's just Hal 9000 as a robot, nothing more. Out of all the Pixar villains, he is one of the weakest simply because he's not original AT ALL. Luckily he's not in the film for long.

The Captain I think was a good character, just because you get to see what a typical human on the ship would act. There are two background characters, one voiced by Ham, which you see but The Captain is the one that is more focused on. Thank god for that, because you get to see that the humans as a whole are not careless or stupid, they just are ignorant from the world that was censored from them and instead they are literally large babies living in the world of Walmart/Coca Cola/Mc Donalds instead of reality.

There are other robots throughout the film and although they are 'cute' like Wall E, they have many personalities, abilities and faults to them. They remind me of Andy's Toys because there are so colorful and can help Wall E or the story yet at the same time are not in the way.

Overall this film is very clever in what it does. I mean good god, there's a love scene with a fire extinguisher! NO ONE would have thought about that idea! The setting feels like it has history, the characters have great personalities, and the atmosphere and music is astonishing. It reminds me of Ratatoulie's atmosphere only with better characters and story, oh and the future theme of course.

Outside of the weak Villain, I see almost nothing wrong with this film and is one of my favorite films of all time.