In this season of celebrating our independence, a surprisingly appropriate movie has come to our movie screens. No, it isn’t the drunken superhero romp known as Hancock, but a movie about a lovable and lonely robot named Wall-E.

Wall-E is one part Short Circuit’s Number Five, One part naive country Bumpkin, and two parts trash compactor. Living alone on an earth that has been swamped with the debris of our disposable culture, Wall-E spends his day cleaning up the crowded trash filled world. Seemingly the last survivor of a fleet of robots designed to clean-up our environment, Wall-E goes about his duties with efficiency, dedication, curiosity, and a good bit of eccentricity. His only friend is a small bug that he feeds the remains of human civilization, seemingly in the form of the ever present cream filled twinky. (Or sponge snack cake, if you prefer to not brand the product ;)) He also watches an old musical, one that shows singing, dancing, and the buddy romance of the lead characters. This lone tape is the last vestiges of real humanity that exists on this one great planet. We soon loon that Wall-E is lonely, waiting for that one someone that so many are waiting for, the one that will help him in his life.
Wall-E’s peace and solitude is shattered when a ship drops off a small probe. The probe, a decidedly feminine, at first spurning the curious Wall-E (with a very powerful gun. Wall-E persists, and they soon develop a quickly burgeoning friendship. Things go well until Wall-E shows his new friend E.V.E. A small plant he found and she is called home…

In a year already packed with great movies, Wall-E can stand with his robotic head held high. This movie is full of the trademark PIXAR quality that we have come to expect from the company. This movie is full of fun, action, humor, and (Surprisingly) tenderness mixed with love. If I had to boil this movie down in to one sentence, I wold describe it as a robotic love story. The two protagonists might be robotic, but their affection and courtship resonate more then many romantic movies I have been forced to watch in my life. This isn’t the whole part of the movie, but it is the main thread that binds the rest of the plot together.

However, much like the great Prince Caspian earlier this year, the beginning of Wall-E can be a little bit slow. I must say it does a great job of setting the mood and the tone of the rest of the movie, it is a needed foundation for what is to come. Then again, I do wonder if it only “seems” slow because there isn’t much of the trademark humor that Pixar so often packs their movie with. When you first see what our planet has become, there was a sense of sadness in me. It may seem far-fetched, but I could see the reckless nature that humanity sometimes exhibits turning our planet in to a unlivable cesspool. This is coming from someone that isn’t even a enviormentalist or a person that is trying to live his life “green.” The beginning is just an echo of what humanity could do, when giving in to the more base habits that we seem to have.

Luckily the film ends on a positive note, showing that humanity has the ability to over come even the most adverse of circumstances. Wall-E factors in to that, waking up those that have lived life in a bit of a trance.

I wonder if we need a Wall-E to wake us up in our modern culture.

Despite my philosophical meanderings, I really enjoyed Wall-E and would recommend it to adults and children alike. It is a magical science fiction romp in to a future that we wouldn’t want to see, yet one that that can still be overcome.

- Warren

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Columns, Friday Morning Movie Madness, Sections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.