Pixar Studios had a winning formula working for it. Its films were innovative, entertaining, and full of plenty of emotion and heart. Each film was critically acclaimed and adored by audiences. However, the studio never tackled any serious issues and instead relied on safe stories that dealt with friendship, loyalty, and love. This all changed with the release of Wall-E. This film focused on the importance of protecting the environment and explored how failure to do so could severely affect humanity. Of course, Pixar didn’t entirely change its approach and attempted to balance the seriousness of its main message with its heart-felt themes. Seeing how the studio successfully pulled this ambitious project off would prove to be fascinating.
The film begins on earth which has tragically become a giant landfill with no signs of any life. The only hints of previous human existence are
remnants of overpasses, crumbled buildings, and abandoned vehicles. In this setting, we are introduced to a small robot named Wall-E. He is a lover of musicals and enjoys collecting artifacts. His life changes when he meets another robot that arrives from outer space. This robot’s main mission is to locate any semblance of life and return with it back to her ship. Wall-E falls in love with this new arrival and begins calling her Eva. Eventually, Eva is won over by Wall-E’s sincerity and the two form a bond, but their relationship changes when Eva finds a live plant. This discovery automatically alerts her superiors’ ship to return and pull her back on board. Wall-E is heartbroken when this happens, but he reacts quickly and follows her into space. Suddenly, he finds himself in the mother ship.
When Wall-E enters the ship, he not only finds Eva, but also discovers that all the humans who vanished from earth are living on board this mammoth, high-tech ship. Pollution has overtaken the world and made living conditions so unbearable that people have been forced to evacuate and live in space. Currently, they are waiting for any sign of life to be detected to signal that they can return to earth. During their time in space, they’ve been enjoying the good life on a ship that fulfills their every wish. As a result, they’ve grown lazy, obese, and unmotivated. The audience learns that every captain responsible for the ship has postponed the passengers’ return to earth indefinitely. The two robots soon realize that the plant that Eva has found holds the key for all humans to return to their previous state of living on earth. However, to accomplish this, the robots must overcome two major obstacles. They must outsmart the ship’s technology and convince the captain and his crew that freewill will make them happier than the guaranteed artificial comfort they enjoy on the ship.
Wall-E is a bold film that tries to delicately balance the serious issue of pollution with the hijinks of its title character. Andrew Stanton, the director and co-writer of this film, who created Finding Nemo, obviously was motivated not to play it safe. The first third of Wall-E is pretty much void of dialogue and the interaction between Eva and Wall-E consists mostly of robotic noises and facial expressions. The Pixar team skillfully used these moments to show the robots’ different emotions and create empathy for its lead characters. Overall, the main characters were well developed and Wall-E himself is very lovable. This is yet another great achievement accomplished by Pixar.
However, the film starts to lose momentum when the Wall-E and Eva board the spaceship and we meet the humans. Their adventure is now dominated by slapstick and running away from the menacing robots on the ship. While the look and personalities of the evil robots are good, the chase scenes tend to last way too long and bog the film down. The audience is repeatedly subjected to watching Wall-E do something stupid, Eva scolding him for it, and then the usual inevitable chaos follows. Also, the whole sequence of the two robots finding the plant, losing the plant, and finding the plant again quickly became tedious. It seemed like Wall-E and Eva had more life on the desolated planet than they did on the ship.
The human characters are are pretty much useless and add nothing to the film. All of the ship’s passengers from the captain to the token two characters (one of them voiced by John Ratzenberger) were very underwhelming. I found them extremely dull and lacking any personality and thought they could’ve been funnier and more sympathetic. Perhaps, they were meant to be boring. Maybe, the Pixar team thought that by depicting their humdrum lives, we would grow to sympathize with them more and root for them to escape their self-imposed prison. Even so, I hate to give Pixar an excuse for what is clearly a rare instance of its laziness concerning character development. I cared so little about the humans’ plight that I wouldn’t have minded if they remained trapped in space for all eternity. I may not have liked the passengers, but this didn’t stop me from liking the overall design of the ship, which was creatively depicted similarly to a 1990’s mega mall. With that said, my overall opinion of those fat humans is . . . Good riddance!
The environmental message of the film works somewhat, showing the decay of the earth and highlighting the pitfalls of overreliance on technology. The setting is very similar to the Mad Max series and The Book of Eli in how the film presents a grim and desolate future. Unlike those films, Wall-E links the cause of the apocalypse to the deteriorating environment as opposed to war. Wall-E gets most of its praise from critics on its portrayal of this issue. However, I thought the film was more effective demonstrating the dangers of reliance on technology. I believe Wall-E would have been a stronger film if it focused more on the issue of how technology can rule over your life without you even realizing it. The humans in the film predictability wanted the comfort and security provided by their spaceship. This resulted not only in their laziness and portly builds, but also eliminated their opportunity to experience adventure, love, and other joys that come from leading a normal life. I actually think this would’ve been a better theme, but once again, since the humans were so underwhelming as characters, the message doesn’t ultimately work.
Another unusual element in this film is the musical score. If you are a Hello Dolly fan, then this is your movie! The selections of the songs “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Only Takes A Moment” from the musical gave me mixed emotions. While they fit well with Wall-E’s moods and emotions, they were also a little distracting. Seeing a clip of a young Michael Crawford singing and dancing in an animated feature was a little surreal. Louis Armstrong’s version of “La Vie en Rose” during the courtship of the two robots, was an improvement although I couldn’t help thinking that I’ve seen this done before in another movie. The overall film score from Thomas Newman was utterly forgettable and didn’t create any emotion unlike the previous Pixar soundtracks. The more that I think about it, maybe there wasn’t enough Hello Dolly music in the film.
Wall-E is a film that critics adore and I can see why. It’s revolutionary in its portrayal of the robots’ budding romance with little dialogue, and it also successfully ties in the message of protecting the environment. I only wish I had more fun watching this film. The first third of the film was magical when Wall-E and Eva were the only two characters featured. When the film changes locations from earth to space, the movie becomes almost painfully boring to watch. The magic disappears and we end up with a film that spends more time focusing on the humans’ monotonous lives and less on the two lead characters. The humans are just props and the robots become more and more predictable. If the film revolved more around the robots and less around the humans, the environmental message would be more effective and the film much more entertaining. I still recommend it, but I don’t know if I would watch it again.
Brian Rating 6/10
-Flyin’ Brian