Pixar Studios has become a benchmark in the animation industry and a sure sell to adults and children looking for entertainment they can enjoy together. Their latest film has a unique concept: Follow a trash-compacting robot on a futuristic Earth as he explores the abandoned landscape and begins to have human feelings. Even more unusual, there is little talking in the first half of the film, with most of the communication occurring through beeps, miming or facial expressions and the calling out of names. With the adorable main character managing to make a very human connection with its audience, this filmmaking experiment is an extraordinary success.
In a cautionary tale for all current inhabitants of this planet, the future in “WALL-E” is bleak. The audience learns early on, from billboards and holograms, that Earth has been abandoned. WALL-E is a small robot who creates enormous stacks out of blocks of garbage. This reliable robot has a pet cockroach to keep him company, but otherwise he is lonely, since his counterparts did not share his longevity. A ship lands with an exploratory robot named EVE aboard, whose confidential mission doesn’t keep her from expressing herself in very human ways, flying whimsically over the desolate landscape. WALL-E’s attempts to make contact with this apparently female robot put him jeopardy of falling in love or being blown apart – whichever comes first.
The animation is first-rate, with very rich and detailed landscapes. The animators created two very expressive robots, using WALL-E’s hands and eyeballs to show his feelings, while EVE has a screen which allows her eyes to change shape. It is obvious EVE is much more advanced than WALL-E; however, both find ways to solve problems in their own unique ways. Still, the question remains whether EVE can adapt and be what Wall-E needs: a companion.
With this romantic story continuing throughout the movie, there are also plenty of moments of humor – since WALL-E is a curious life form who doesn’t always understand what he’s getting into – and moments of danger. Once humans are introduced later on into the story, there is both sadness about what humanity has become and humor about where our little gadgets have taken us. Many themes are poignantly interwoven into an otherwise simple story, such as our responsibility to our planet, America’s problem with obesity, and our ever-growing reliance on communication through technology instead of in person.
Rather than using a heavy hand to preach to the audience, Pixar cleverly introduces these problems into the minds of those who are ultimately going to have to solve them. Never lagging or running out of steam, this story races ahead at light speed, teaching us that in the end even a robot deserves love.
