Wall-E (DVD)

...hundred years a robot named WALL-E (Waste Allocation Loader Lifter, Earth-Class) has been trying to pick up centuries worth of rubbish left by the human inhabitants of earth. But in that time he’s developed a personality and is easily distracted by shiny objects, spends time caring for his pet cockroach, gazes wistfully at the stars and longs for companionship. Then a spaceship lands near his home and from it comes EVE, who appears to be the answer ...
...rubbish. The aerial shots of WALL-E going about his business, a tiny speck amidst the towers of garbage show how desolate the planet is. We get glimpses of the ubiquitous advertising for global conglomerates and our first inklings of why the world has turned into a tip. You can see individual dust particles as they glimmer in the light or are blown around by the wind and you can identify items in the trash piles. The skies are subtly hued and the ... more

For seven hundred years a robot named WALL-E (Waste Allocation Loader Lifter, Earth-Class) has been trying to pick up centuries worth of rubbish left by the human inhabitants of earth. But in that time he’s developed a personality and is easily distracted by shiny objects, spends time caring for his pet cockroach, gazes wistfully at the stars and longs for companionship. Then a spaceship lands near his home and from it comes EVE, who appears to be the answer to his prayers. EVE discovers that WALL-E has stumbled on the secret to the planet’s survival and rushes back to space to tell the humans. But he can’t let her go and so follows her on the biggest adventure of his life…

Oh Pixar, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways… with the exception of the beautiful but soulless “Cars” they have always made good on their promises. So I had high hopes for their latest offering and wasn’t disappointed. I like that each of their features is preceded by a short. This time it is “Presto” showing a battle between a magician and his hungry rabbit, who hijacks the magic show with the help of a truly miraculous top hat. It is packed with harsh slapstick that reminded me of the Looney Tunes cartoons heyday, perpetrated by an abominably cute bunny. The animation is great, putting in all the attention to detail you would expect from a full-length film.

Director Andrew Stanton is a veteran of Pixar features and his expertise shows in two key aspects; the way he gives his mechanical characters distinct personalities and his astute comic timing. He makes the robots’ feelings real to us, creating a bond between the audience and characters. Their romance is quite touching. And he nails the comedy, showing WALL-E’s delight in an object-finding montage (such as a bra he wears like a pair of glasses), the wave of destruction he causes on the spaceship or his tentative courtship of EVE when she is entirely unaware of his presence, sheltering her from the rain and playing a one-sided game of ‘Pong’. It’s the right mix of slapstick and situation comedy. Of course there are film references for the grown-ups including “Star Trek”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Poseidon Adventure”. The director hits the jokes and moves on, knowing another will be along shortly. But Stanton keeps the pacing tight, bringing the film in at a sprightly ninety-eight minutes.

The main event is a visual feast. There’s so much exquisite detail in every frame - the film opens on an impressive slow zoom in through the solar system, down through the polluted atmosphere to ground level. Clouds of smog surround vast landscapes of what appear to be skyscrapers, but on closer examination are gigantic stacks of compressed rubbish. The aerial shots of WALL-E going about his business, a tiny speck amidst the towers of garbage show how desolate the planet is. We get glimpses of the ubiquitous advertising for global conglomerates and our first inklings of why the world has turned into a tip. You can see individual dust particles as they glimmer in the light or are blown around by the wind and you can identify items in the trash piles. The skies are subtly hued and the work on light and shade is great, allowing for different atmospheric conditions (such as heat haze and dust storms) and times of day. But possibly the most beautiful sights come in outer space where you get a sense of scope as we see planets and nebulae in fleeting but superb detail. Even the ring of sparkling detritus circling the earth is beautiful. The spaceship is shiny and almost antiseptic with polished, smooth surfaces in the public areas. Meanwhile the bridge is a dark and forbidding place with plenty of shadows and blinking lights.

The characters are marvellously rendered. WALL-E looks like Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit” designed by the engineers at JCB. His body is a small cubic trash compactor and when he’s scared or recharging his batteries his head and limbs retract into it, leaving him looking like a slightly rusty yellow washing machine. His hydraulic arms have a full range of movement and his digits are remarkably nimble. His eyes move independently of each other with large lenses that give us the impression of expressive peepers. Lots of tiny ‘facial’ movements and hand gestures give him a huge range of expression. As do his nervous movements. Look at his reaction when he thinks he’s run over his pet cockroach, or the way he shakes and hides when the rocket lands. He trundles along on his caterpillar tracks (occasionally looking pigeon-toed) with a jittery motion as if adjusting to every imperfection in the ground below him. He has a good sense of weight and the animators have nailed the sense of weightlessness in space. But most importantly he has a personality. He exudes a sense of childlike wonder at the world around him thanks to the humanised reactions and makes a great slapstick stooge.

By contrast EVE is sleek and shiny, looking like the ultimate evolution of Robo-Sapien or a futuristic product from Apple. She’s all curves, pristine white finish and a minimalist design that is reflected in the seamless compartments and apparently floating limbs and head or an arm that can develop fingers or transform into a laser cannon. She too has an expressive face thanks to a series of different digital eye shapes that can convey amusement, happiness, sadness, anger and suspicion amongst others. The other robots tend towards her design but with form fitted more closely to function, such as the brush-wielding M-O, the militaristic page robot and a plethora of other mechanoids. The humans are flabby, tiny-legged blobs who, thanks to almost a millennium of robot-assisted living have forgotten how to walk and spend all their time soaking up the consumerism in their spaceport home.

The screenplay by director Stanton, long-time collaborator Pete Docter and Jim Reardon is mainly a love story between WALL-E and EVE, which seems an odd concept considering they are robots. But the writers put so much into their relationship that it works. There’s the awkward first meeting where EVE nearly vaporises WALL-E with a laser, his tentative introduction and subsequent sharing of his container full of treasures and love of “Hello Dolly”, her discovery of the key to human survival, his romance of her while she’s offline for several months and his pursuit beyond the boundaries of the earth. And all the way through we feel the warmth between them grow. There are schmaltzy moments, but these are balanced by comedy, so you never feel like you’re going to go into a diabetic coma from all the syrup. And there is a strong environmental message that warns us to clean up our act while we have the chance.

The key to the main character comes in his ability to inspire curiosity in others, often by accident. He has a childlike innocence and a beguiling openness. Sure it helps that his design makes him cute as a button, but he’s written as a bumbling romantic and that’s what makes him so loveable. Meanwhile EVE and the other robots are all business, with some showing a comic excess in their devotion to duty. The human characters are inevitably less compelling because they are plot devices and the villain of the piece is entirely silent and written in reference to another science-fiction movie. There isn’t much in the way of dialogue, what with the titular character’s and EVE’s vocabulary being limited to his name and hers. The humans provide exposition, but lack the charm of their near mute co-stars.

The majority of the voices were produced electronically by Ben Burtt, who proves how much expression can be put into WALL-E’s pronunciation of his name and EVE’s. He also does a nice line in tuneful, absent-minded humming and surprised noises. Meanwhile Elissa Knight provides the vocodered sound of EVE, showing how many possible intonations there are of the hero’s name. Fred Willard turns up as one of the only live-action characters (if you include the excerpts from “Hello Dolly”) as Shelby Forthright, CEO of the corporation whose rubbish crams the earth. It’s an energetic performance that seems to draw on his talent for improvisation if his spontaneity is anything to go by. Sigourney Weaver features as the voice of the ship’s computer, while John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy offer a human perspective on the world as John and Mary and Jeff Garlin is nervy as Captain McCrea.

The original music by Thomas Newman relies on orchestral arrangements. Our first sight of earth is accompanied by creepy plucked harps and cellos, the hero by warm strings and chimes and his curiosity by jazzy strings and woodwinds. EVE warrants syrupy strings and harp and sweeping strings. The spaceship she arrives on is accompanied by tight strings and brass and the mothership is represented by imposing brass. But Newman diverges slightly with synthesized strings and flutes for the rampant consumerism onboard. It adds a cheesy aspect to the “ideal world” the humans are living in. There are suitably tense strings and percussion when it looks like WALL-E might be lost and epic brass and percussion for the grand finale. The other soundtrack choices include snippets of songs from “Hello Dolly!” a Louis Armstrong version of “La Vie En Rose” and “Blue Danube” and Holst’s “Jupiter” in two of the comic references to “2001: A Space Odyssey”. It’s an appropriate body of work that suits the film.

“WALL-E” is a delight for all the family. There are enough cute robots, chases and adventures to keep the kids happy while parents will be spellbound by the exquisite animation and love story. The direction is great, the writing as good as anything I’ve seen from Pixar before and the voice performances remarkable considering most aren’t done by humans. I completely fell in love with it and would happily watch it again and again. But I still think it’s weird how much merchandising there is considering the environmental message of the film. 

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