WALL-E (****)

WALL-E
Directed by Andrew Stanton



****

Ever since Toy Story, Pixar studios has produced some of the best films of the last decade. Finding Nemo and Ratatouille were unbelievably sweet films which charmed audiences, and won Oscars, while The Incredibles was a masterpiece about family and responsibility. Their newest film, WALL-E, believe it or not, is better than all of them. The story of a lonely robot, WALL-E has romance, it has social commentary, and a document of human strength, all squeezed into a 90-minute kids movie, that will reach more adults.

The first image we see in WALL-E, is large skyscrapers through the dirty, filthy mist, and as the shot gets closer and closer, we realize that most of these buildings are just constructed patterns of trash. The film takes place about 700-900 years in the future, and the only thing left on the world is WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth Class). He is the last robot left of all the WALL-Es, a race of bots left on Earth to clean all the trash amassed by human beings. All WALL-E has is his pattern of trash lifting, and a pet cockroach.

Where are all the humans, you ask? Well, as the film describes, the world basically succumbed to a humongous corporation aptly named 'Big & Large', which provided everything from food to gas. This preoccupation with materialism leads to an overflow of garbage. The human race decides to take a space cruise, while WALL-Es clean the world. Unfortunately, the plan doesn't work, as the humans stay in space, and WALL-E is left to himself, savoring small things such as spare pieces for himself and his video copy of Hello, Dolly!.

WALL-E's loneliness is cured one day, though, when he is visited by a large spaceship, dropping off a much-more advanced robot to track down living conditions. The new robot is persistent in her search for life (I say she because the film makes no bones about her sex), but her very presence creates an excitement in WALL-E that he hasn't felt in several centuries. They meet, WALL-E finds out that her name is EVE, and he shows her his layer, and his movies. WALL-E has no choice but to follow her back into space.

It isn't until about halfway through the film, when WALL-E is aboard the ship, do we get any true dialogue. Instead we are satisfied with robot dialogue, which in the case WALL-E consists of screeches, purrs, and squeals. We've seen this in other Disney pictures, where non-human characters are made more humane than the human ones, and that is the case here. The feelings expressed by WALL-E's camera eyes and clamp fingers are so apparent, there is just an unbelievable shade of adorableness.

The most appealing thing in WALL-E is the relationship between WALL-E and EVE, but what cannot be ignored is it's message about humanity. It both criticizes the overindulgence and irresponsibility of the human race, while also praising the never-breaking human spirit. When WALL-E is aboard the space cruise (of which the humans have been on about 700 years too long), human beings have been degraded into obese cretins, who get around on hover chairs, having lost the ability to walk. It's not totally their fault about their size, since living in no gravity for such a long time has increased their bone size.

The social commentary is not stricken hard, and if not paying attention can be missed completely. In a way, that is the beauty of WALL-E. Through it all, it is not meant to proclaim injustice or wrongdoing, but to announce the beauty within love and everyone's soul. Their are beautiful sequences, helped by the films nifty look. Tough and grainy on Earth; sleek and tranquil in space. The film seems Kubrick-ian at a lot of times (in fact, the film directly references 2001: A Space Odyssey on more than one occasion), and it's style is only supplanted by its unbelievably warm characters.

The lack of dialogue, I fear, might throw more people off of this film than it should. The children will love seeing WALL-E scramble all over the screen, and if adults can't appreciate the story that the film tells, then it's safe to say they may not have a heart. I feel safe in saying that WALL-E is the best film of 2008, and while I'm anticipating many movies later this year, it'd be hard, I think, for any of them to be as good as this wonderful fable, containing the most adorable robot to ever (EVER) grace the silver screen.