Posted by
Emmett of the Unblinking Eye on Thursday, June 26, 2008 10:16:07 AM
WALL E, the new Disney-Pixar collaboration, is simply a wonderful, wonderful, movie. The trailer gives you little idea of what the movie is about, or what you have in store. WALL E is the last remaining
Waste
Allocation
Load
Lifter
Earth-Class on an Earth abandoned by humans 700 yeaers ago. His only companion is a cockroach. Each day WALL E does what he was built to do -- compacts and stacks trash -- and somethings he developed himself -- collecting knicnacks. Until he meets EVE, a much more modern robot sent to Earth to look for one very special thing.
The film owes a great deal to Kurt Russell's
Soldier
(believe it or not) and Noah should at least be given an "inspired by" credit, and it is probably more geared for older children and any adult than to the very young. Its long stretches of silence and slow build-up may be hard for little kids to deal with, and any adult shepherding kids to the movie will be inundated with questions. But for
anyone over 10, WALL E will be an absolutely fantastic movie experience. The animation is spectacular and the characters -- even though mostly robots -- are well developed (who knew you could develop an emotional attachment with a cockroach?). But it is the simple love story of two robots, one of whose's only desire is to hold hands, that really makes WALL E special. Even its obvious environmental-pro-Al-Gore-anti-business bias doesn't distract from its entertainment value -- and it does sort of make you want to go out, exercise and cut back on the sweets.
And I liked the Pixar cartoon that precedes it, too.