This is a Very Good Movie, and if you do not go pay to see it you are degrading from the support of animation as a whole.
On to the rest of this review/recap/recommendation. It will be very long. It will tell the story but it will not do the movie justice. If you don't want a review yet or are in a TL;DR mood, ignore it or skip to the summary at the end, and just take the above two sentences as my Official Communist Seal of Glorious Quality.
Be warned, the previews for this movie will be universally painful to the point of being kicked in the balls repeatedly, especially when Beverly Hills Chihuahua rears its toxic-waste mutated head (more on that here, presented by Rifftrax: ). That said, the traditional Pixar short which follows ("Presto", about a battle between a magician and his rabbit), more than makes up for the suck with an influx of quality, so by the time the opening credits roll your trauma from the previews should be negated.
WARNING! THE FOLLOWING WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
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Wall-E opens immediately with a song, and a top-notch song at that- "Put On Your Sunday Clothes", from the musical Hello, Dolly! and sung by Michael Clayton (that, by the way, was a less-than-average film with better-than-average music). Cue the obligatory space shots, ending up on Earth- an earth suffering under apocalypse not by nuclear fire or climate chaos, but an overbuildup of trash. A thick coat of dead satellites encircles the planet, mountains of waste coat the landscape, and as we zoom in on our unnamed Eastern Seaboard city roughly half the skyscrapers we see are made of cubed-up trash stretching high into the sky.
The source of these well-built stacks of cubes soon becomes evident as we meet our protagonist, WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), a little trash-compacting robot who scurries around the wasteland gathering up the refuse and boxing it up, building these oblique monoliths of garbage (fun note- Wall-E's sounds were done by Ben Burtt, who did the soundwork for R2-D2). The first twenty minutes are without any dialogue at all as we follow the little bot around his day, tearing through the rubbish and discovering interesting objects that he takes back to his shelter to keep- that being a wrecked mobile storage unit for tons of Wall-E's. It becomes evident early on that our hero is the last of these, as the rest of them could not survive the harsh conditions of the radically changed Earth and now sit frozen where they fell apart, acting as sources of replacement parts for our plucky hero.
Wall-E's home is a cornucopia of objects, and it becomes clear after his 700-years-or-so sojourn that our bot has developed quite the personality. He has likings to certain things as well, including an iPod (reference to later) with a few prized videoclips of Hello, Dolly!, which is where he evidently learned most of his emotional programming from.
Wall-E ends his day, and wakes up the next with a hilarious scene that we can all associate with (robots neither have coffee to drink nor means of doing so- a horrifying thought), and begins his next day, making a new foundation for another trash skyscraper. In doing so, however, he finds a unique piece of work inside an old refrigerator- a single sprouting plant, which he transplants to a boot full of dirt and prepares to take home. However, on his way there he encounters a red floating dot, which he chases to a plain beyond the city- and it soon becomes evident that this is part of a spaceship's landing sequence. The scene that follows introduces us to our second major character- EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, whose design is based off of Apple's sleek-looking white everythings lately), whose mission (as deduced from her name) is to detect if Earth has become capable of sustaining life once more. Wall-E falls in love with her, but she has one directive and she's determined to stick with it- even if it means blowing up everything else in sight with her arm-cannon (which she's rather fast to use).
The dialogue cuts in shortly after Eve's fruitless search leads to the complete destruction of an oil tanker, and is essentially limited to names and a few other words. Wall-E manages to save Eve from one of the riotous pollution storms sweeping the surface and the two escape back to the crawler, where a humorous and touching sequence (a notable feature of this movie and practically a Pixar trademark by now) leads to a slight development of emotion for Eve, and Eve's discovery of the plant. She quickly grabs it, stores it in an inner chamber, and shuts the hell down.
Wall-E is understandably distraught, and goes to lengths to protect the inactive bot, keeping her company and trying to protect her in the notoriously harsh environment of 2700s Earth. Another of those humorous-but-touching sequences follows, and eventually Wall-E goes back to work- only to have the ship return for Eve while he's out. He races back and clings on to the outside as it lifts off, returning to the mothership.
This is the Axiom, the flagship of humanity's off-world fleet. See, after causing the massive trash-related apocalypse on earth, Buy-N-Large (the megacorporation that had by that time essentially taken over the planet- say its name aloud and you'll get it) launched a massive fleet of also-massive starships to house humanity until they could clean up the mess. The cruise was supposed to last five years. It has now been 700, and what remains of humanity are overweight "porkbeasts" (as Fat Chicks in Party Hats would say) with greatly regressed bone structures, locked in an endless cycle of Buy-N-Large (BNL) advertisments, riding everywhere on hovering chairs, eating all meals in drink form, and practically without any person-to-person contact.
Anywho. After Eve and Wall-E arrive, Eve is shunted off to the Captain's chambers at the behest of a steward robot named GO-4 (say it aloud) and Wall-E follows closely, evading ship security and triggering the entrance of our Comic Relief, M-O (Molecular Obliterator); a cleaning droid who follows the trail of grime and filth Wall-E tracks behind him to the point of betraying his main directive and jumping off his control track, intent on cleaning up the mess.
Enter Key Figures 4 and 5: Captain McCrea and Otto the autopilot (possibly a nod to Airplane!). After the Captain's chamber is entered (following a cinematic run through the guts of the Axiom, in which Wall-E accidentally frees two humans from the marketing feed), Eve's arrival triggers code A113 in Otto, who awakens Captain McCrea and informs him that a probe has come back positive. This has never happened before, or certainly not in the years since McCrea took duty, and he relies on the computer (Voiced by Sigourney Weaver in a nod to Aliens) to tell him what to do. In the meantime, Eve reactivates, and has a panicked reunital with Wall-E, whose presence shockes the captain considerably.
All is not well. The plant has gone missing, and Otto (who posesses a single red eye, much like Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey) suggests that the probe has malfunctioned. McCrea orders her to be checked out in the maintenance lab, and after he is greeted by Wall-E with a handshake sends the trashbot along to be cleaned. Inadvertently, McCrea has the computer analyze the soil from Wall-E's hand, and in rapt fascination after the first entry it gives begins inquiring along more lines, to gain more knowledge (this is evidently similar to Wikipedia chaining; he starts with "earth", moves to "sea", and by the time we see him again he's asking about "hoedown").
Down in the chop shop, Eve is taken in to be given the runover, but it's behind a screen of thick glass and Wall-E is left in a pen on the other side. From his view, however, it looks like she's being torn apart (isn't it always), and he panics, breaking out of his pen, smashing into the repair bay, and inadvertantly firing Eve's cannon arm, freeing all the robots currently in the bay for repair (the Hello Dolly song is playing here, of note- that'll be important later). Cue bedlam. However, Eve and Wall-E are quickly labeled as "rogue robots", and in resignation Eve takes the little trashbot to the escape pod bay, preparing to send him back to Earth.
But! Before she can do so, GO-4 shows up, and in the same escape pod deposits- the plant! Cry and alarm, something is wrong on this pleasure cruise. Wall-E attempts to retrieve the sprout, but the pod blasts off with perfect timing and the self-destruct set at twenty seconds. Eve launches out into space after him, but the pod blows up- of course, after our tin friend escapes, with a fire extinguisher acting as his propellant. Wall-E reveals that he saved the plant and Eve is so happy that she "kisses" him (static discharge- take note of this, it will be important later and there will be a test).
Cue an epic scene with the two twisting and wheeling around outside the ship. The background music here is aptly named "Define Dancing", after the captain's final query to the computer before bed. It's a charming scene, and if you don't love the protagonists after it's through, I hope you enjoy your life, Satan.
Anyhow, the two make it back on-board, and Eve makes her way to the captain's chamber with the plant. Cue revelation of the big plot; Otto has been following an old directive from BNL's president, who claims that Earth is beyond salvation and orders the autopilots of the fleet to stay their course no matter what (parallels to Iraq?). The scene that follows induces the captain into arguing with Otto despite Eve's image records of a blasted earth (also: Eve gets to view the security camera footage of Wall-E protecting her while she was deactivated, and presumably gets a big hit of emotion right thar). Otto tries to fling the plant down the trash chute Eve rocketed out of, only to have Wall-E climb up and save it. Otto tazers the Bejezus out of him and deactivates Eve, locking the captain in his quarters and effectively assuming full control of the ship.
Cut to Eve and Wall-E in the trash bay. In another Touching Scene (though not as humorous), Eve frees herself from the compactor units (WALL-A: Axiom-Class WALL-E's) and goes about a frantic search for a replacement for Wall-E's damaged motherboard- even disregarding her prime directive to do so. M-O also finally catches up here, cleaning all remaining grime from Wall-E and getting formally introduced. Since the search for a new motherboard was unsuccessful here, Eve's only option is to get the ship headed back to Earth, where Wall-E's spare parts warehouse still sits. So they blast out of the trash hold and begin a counter-mutiny.
The other malfunctioning robots, brought to call by Wall-E's music player, are their army, and prove quite effective against the security droids. Captain McCrea also rallies, hotwiring his quarters desk and broadcasting the location of the DNA-scanner that will key the return to Earth. Eve, Wall-E, and the bots head off to the Lido Deck (pool deck) thus, and McCrea further lays down the deception by luring Otto into his quarters to break the lockdown. A battle then ensues, up to the bridge, and McCrea activates the holodetector.
All the humans onboard converge on the Lido Deck thusly, as programmed, and the mutiny becomes apparent. However, the plant is lost as Otto tilts the ship inadvertently in his fight with the Captain, and the holodetector begins to lower, only to be held open by Wall-E as Eve searches frantically for the plant. However, Otto smashes the button and the detector closes, crushing our plucky hero and leaving only a small gap.
McCrea, having had enough, gets up and takes humanity's first steps in 700 years (hilarious note- this scene contains the music piece "Also Spake Zarathrusta", which I've almost certainly misspelled and which scored one of the most epic scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey), deactivating Otto and righting the ship. Eve and the humans on board quickly ferry the plant upwards, forcing it into the detector, which rises, freeing our smashed hero, and sends the Axiom screaming back to Earth.
Eve frantically repairs Wall-E at his trailer, but moments after being powered on it becomes evident that something is wrong with his memory- the trashbot has no recollection of anything but his prime directive. Eve, distraught, takes hold of his hand as a parting gesture and leans her head towards his while humming the song "It Only Takes A Moment" (also from Hello Dolly, on Wall-E's second clip), before "kissing" him again.
Ba-DING! This sweet gesture reconnects the droid's memory banks and cues the happy ending. Be sure to stick around for the credits- they're well worth the wait all the way to the end.
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Official People's Summary: KICK-ASS. Charming without being sappy. Funny without being stupid. And things blow up, too, so you know it's good. Though humorous, the movie relies on "Pixar Humor" rather than the disgusting, cheap, overdone humor we see constantly in films nowadays- in the whole movie I saw not ONE fart joke, which speaks volumes for its character. It knows where its plot is and it sticks to it like glue, but rolls along like a railroad- fast but always perfectly timed. It's a science-fiction epic, it's a great romance saga, it's a masterpiece of animation, and it's quiet in the opening and boistrous at the end, carrying itself superbly to be possibly the best movie I have ever seen. This one goes straight to the favorites list, and is well worth ten bucks for a ticket. I declare this a five-star film, and those familiar with my ratings in the past know that I do not give out five stars easily.
Official KGB Rating: Five out of five Glorious People's Stars
Edited by Communist, 13 July 2008 - 06:52 PM.
