Wall-E

Wall-E (2008)

Ranking: Meh
Not so Trashy

During the moving process, as my interweb habits were disturbed somewhat, I began writing my reviews down in a big book and typing them up later. I've become slightly spoiled by this process and am now returning to my old style of using the notes I made on the film (I make notes on every flm I watch) but basically just winging it. Also, I just got a new computer and have yet to become adjusted to the keyboard. I apologize for the numerous spellnig mistakes which will no doubt ensue...

The story of a cute little trash compacting robot, who was left behind to clean up the Earth while the entire human race floats about the Universe on a cruise ship. He spends most of his time just bumming around, collecting weird nic nacs, talking to his cockroach friend (note: not a cute kitten or a bluebird or whatever. A cockroach) and watching Hello Dolly (WHY?!). He then meets EVE, a lady robot sent to Earth to look for plants or whatever. And he ends up having all kinds of adventures and stuff.

The film was very interesting. The first fifteen minutes in particular where we see the Earth, completely covered with massive piles of garbage. It's actually a little scary. It freaked me out, anyway. As soon as EVE shows up the movie becomes slightly less interesting, although it does contain lots of nasty comments on modern society.

For example, people have been living on this cruise ship in space for upwards of seven hundred years and have devolved from people (live action humans in CGI surroundings) to big fat marshmallow people, who use hoverchairs to get around and eat everything from a cup. Ew.

Normally I'm not too crazy about CGI animation - call me old fashioned but I prefer stop motion - but this was some of the best I've seen, as far as the robots went. The people weren't terribly realistic looking, but the robots looked excellent.

Anyway, the movie plays like a great big long iPod commercial, mixed with environmental propaganda (I was surprised that the lightbulb Wall-E had back at his pad wasn't a CFL), but as far as post-apocalyptic sci-fi for kids went, it was pretty good and contained plenty of references to other flicks such as Bladerunner, 2001, and Alien (Sigourney Weaver is the voice of the ship's computer) which little kids probably wouldn't get but make me feel very smug.

END

Directed by: Andrew Stanton. Written by: Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon. Voices: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Kathy Najimy, John Ratzenberger, MacIn Talk, Fred Willard, Sigourney Weaver (!).