WALL-E: Movie Review (2008)

Directed by Andrew Stanton, written by Stanton and Jim Reardon, 103 minutes, rated G.

The last time Disney and Pixar teamed up for a movie, it was in the Academy Award-winning “Ratatouille,” a magnificent film that followed one determined, loveable little rat named Remy, who may have been raised to eat trash, poor thing, but who nevertheless dreamed big of becoming a master chef and full-on gourmand.

Now, in their latest effort, trash still enters into the equation, this time in a much larger but no less satisfying way. The result is a terrific film, one that lifts the bar for computer animation--literally and figuratively--high into the universe.

Director Andrew Stanton based his movie on a script he co-wrote with Jim Reardon. The film is set hundreds of years in the future, with Earth now burnt to a near crisp and overcome by mountains of trash piled as high as the tallest skyscrapers.

There, working diligently at ground level, is WALL-E, the adorable robot with the sloping cameras for eyes and a clunky body whose job it is to neatly package all the waste we humans left behind before fleeing the planet when it no longer could sustain us.

As for the human race, the outlook is grim. We’re depicted as fat, lazy creatures with giant bellies and almost zero bone mass. We’re like huge, bumbling infants, all grasping for foodstuffs and comfort while looking dazed and confused aboard the Axiom, a giant space ship that roams the heavens, presumably until Earth is once again inhabitable.

With only a cockroach for companionship, WALL-E’s loneliness is as palpable as the dire situation facing Earth. In his downtime, he collects things. He likes his Rubik’s Cube. He watches “Hello, Dolly!” on an old television set and responds to the romance playing out onscreen, which only deepens his isolation.

And so when he unexpectedly is visited by EVE, a sleek, hot (and hot-tempered) robot sent to Earth to find signs of life in vegetation, what he sees in her is the love of his life. He would follow her anywhere, which proves something of a problem when he gifts to EVE a plant he found growing in an old shoe.

Since EVE is programmed to immediately return any sort of plant life to the Axiom for study, off she goes, with Wall-E tagging along for an adventure that consumes the rest of the movie. Though the twists and turns that ensue won’t be revealed here, it is safe to say this: While aboard the Axiom, which is owned by an evil corporate giant reminiscent of Wal-Mart, echoes of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” abound, with the movie not only becoming about man against machine, but also machine against machine.

With its gorgeous, detailed animation backing a script so spare in dialogue, you watch in admiration at how well the story nevertheless is told, “WALL-E” is another triumph for the great, creative minds coming out of one of Hollywood’s brightest think-tanks. The movie is exciting, it’s poignant, it’s prescient, and it has a vision for the future steeped in the very real problems troubling our planet now.

Coming away from it, you might want to just hand Disney and Pixar the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature now. While it could happen, it’s difficult to imagine a better, more impressive animated film will be released this year.

Grade: A