Thursday 12 January 2012

WALL-E

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Year:2008
Country of origin:USA
Director:Andrew Stanton
Genre:Lonely robots
Starring:Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin
Rating:5/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/
Tagline:In Space, No One Can Hear You Clean
Favourite line:"Foreign contaminant!"

Lovely.
Just lovely.

The plot:
WALL-E, a rubbish processing robot, lives a lonely, simple life on an abandoned Earth of the future, pottering around collecting up the litter and debris and compacting it into small cubes. One day, a ship descends and from it emerges a new robot, EVE. After some initial confusion and the occasional laser blast, the robots seem to be getting along, right up to the moment EVE is exposed to a small plant, at which point she sticks it in her chest and seems to deactivate.
Confused, WALL-E tries to bring her round, unsuccessfully. Then, suddenly, the ship returns and takes EVE away, but WALL-E manages to clamber aboard, and the race is on to save EVE and discover just what was so important about that small piece of vegetation.

Beautifully animated, this is thoughtful, warm, truly heart-aching stuff.
Normally, when something is considered family friendly and 'life-affirming' (shudder) my bile gland goes into overdrive, but here, it was impossible not to be enchanted.
Incredibly, for a movie aimed at kids primarily, there are very few lines of dialogue, most of the plot development done by visuals alone, be it action scenes or the expressionism of the robot creations themselves.
After being burnt by Toy Story 1 way back when - I HATED that - I have been giving Pixar a wide berth but, with Finding Nemo and now WALL-E, I'm starting to get the feeling my prejudices may have been misplaced and that, far from being pale shadows of the mastery of Hayao 'Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away' Miyazaki, maybe, just maybe, Pixar are worth another look.
Excellent, indeed.

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