WALL-E: All About Eve

Twenty years ago Pixar Animation Studios revolutionized cinema with the first full length completely computer-generated film. Two decades later and Pixar is still one of the most consistently groundbreaking studios in the business. Leading up to the release of their new film The Good Dinosaur, I will be going through Pixar's entire filmography at the rate of two movies a week. We've arrived at WALL-E, which has one of the great first acts of any movie ever.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Andrew Stanton
Writers: Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Jim Reardon
Cast: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, MacInTalk, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver
Runtime: 98 mins.
2008

If we were to only take the first 30 or so minutes of WALL-E into account, it would be a perfect 10/10 movie no question about it. The film opens with the camera roving through the galaxy to the sound of an upbeat old timey song. As the camera moves in on earth, our wonder turns mournful as we are blasted with imagery of an abandoned planet, mistreated and misshapen by centuries of irreversible pollution. It is in this trashy wasteland that we are introduced to our first, central, and for the moment only character: WALL-E. WALL-E is a trash compacting robot given the impossible task of cleaning up the Earth by humans who have long since died off. Yet the relics of humanity remain, and a blissfully large portion of this film plays out like silent slapstick steeped in sentimentalism. WALL-E recovers artifacts that his robot brain cannot easily comprehend, and he utilizes them in whatever charming way suits him. There's something comforting in this little robot gathering the remains of humanity around him in an effort to create an identity for himself in this lost world, and something immensely tragic as well.

Then one day all of that changes. A rocketship drops a drone named EVE, a sleek feminine hyperfuturistic robot whose purpose on Earth is not at first clear. As she sets about her duty, the narrative morphs into a love story, with WALL-E craving the companionship that he had never before allowed himself to admit he wanted. The narrative is at its heart a simple and familiar story, but the way it plays out on the apocalyptic stage makes it feel almost mythic in its gravity. This is spurred along by phenomenal production design. The world may be dead, but the sheer glut of detail parading across every shot makes it feel more alive than any other movie setting I can readily think of. The soundtrack is alternately light and melancholy, a masterpiece composed by stellar Pixar contributor Thomas Newman. The camerawork zooms, pans, and pulls our attention masterfully through the desolate futurescape.

The entire half hour sequence balances clever homage with stunning inventiveness, makes us care deeply about two robots who only speak a few words between them, and ends up being one of the unique and defining achievements in all of animation, as well as cinema writ large. Unfortunately, the remaining hour does not live up to the benchmark set by the beginning. How could it?

Perhaps unfortunately is too strong a word, as the movie never ceases to be entertaining. (SPOILER ALERT FOR THE REST OF THE REVIEW.) Much of the rest of the film takes place on the enormous sustainable spaceship that all of humanity has been occupying for centuries, waiting for any sign of plant life to turn up on any of the planets the ship's system monitors. That is not the only function of the ship's system: humanity's lives have been on autopilot for years. All of their needs and desires are defined and provided by the extensive network of circuitry and robotics occupying the spaceship. As such, humans have become rather fat and useless. When they learn that Earth can sustain plant life, will they even want to return?

Like Monsters, Inc. before it, it's incredibly high concept and rather baldfacedly political. If you're going to make your movie an allegory, I suppose there are worse things than sustainability to rally around and overblown corporatism to rally against. The film also lampoons our increasing reliance on mechanization, which I am less enthusiastic about, but the commentary is thematically strong.

There's nothing explicitly wrong with the back two thirds, my problem is just that once the transition is made, it feels like the air gets let out of the story's sails. Stanton must have known this, which is why the final hour is lined wall to wall with electric chase sequence after electric chase sequence, as if to distract us from whatever lost potential the movie might have had. You could argue that the move to the mothership is a necessary plot development, as the first half hour could not be sustainable *cough* over an entire feature film runtime. That might be right, but I also wonder why exactly not.

At any rate, the rest of the movie is exciting. The way the spaceship functions is super interesting too, and all of the robot workers in the movie are imbued with a tremendous amount of personality. I don't like the humans nearly as much. The character models are weirdly cartoony compared to the gutpunching realism of Earth, or even the heavily featured recordings of Shelby Forthright (Fred Willard) from years past. WALL-E himself feels far more grounded than any of the people. This is meant to be a critique of course, but I found it off-putting, perhaps not even in the way it was intended to be off-putting.

The movie ends with humanity triumphantly returning to Earth, of course. It's a good finish, but it felt a bit sloppy to me. We've seen these fat techie humans regain the desire to repopulate the Earth, but I simply don't believe they're capable. It feels idealistic. Thankfully, this very issue is tackled in the end credits with a montage of humanity's reconstruction of its home planet. The art style, shifting from image to image to represent different eras of cultural progression, shows humans building fire and farming and such with the considerable aid of their robot companions. It is one of my all-time favorite credit sequences.

I can't give WALL-E as high of a score as I wish I could, but it is nevertheless essential viewing. Eight years later and Pixar's achievements here feel no less revolutionary than the day this special movie was released.

4 / 5  BLOBS

The Short: Presto

Presto, like all great animated slapstick, stars a mischievous bunny rabbit. The gimmick has all of the visceral space-and-logic pleasure of a game of Portal: The magician owns two magic hats that share a teleportational connection. To perform the famed bunny-out-of-the-hat trick, he makes his bunny wear the one hat backstage while he uses the other onstage. But when the bunny is feeling uncooperative because he hasn't gotten his carrot yet, all manner of mindbending hijinks ensue.

I'm not sure why I should have been inspired by this particular short to say so, but among the list of Pixar's incredible achievements is putting the short film as an art form on the radar of the general public. Short films, like short fiction, are criminally overlooked by almost everybody (myself included). In putting such care and craft into the form and releasing their shorts theatrically, they are bringing an underused medium to the masses, and for that I am grateful.

4/5