Film Review: Wall-E

Pixar as a formidable storytelling machine is not an entity I’m entirely comfortable with. The studio has turned itself into a faceless animation brand name, and while I can’t argue the box office numbers, I’m not buying the artistic results. “Wall-E” is Pixar’s biggest creative gamble in over a decade; a genuine cinematic leap of faith. However, the ambition doesn’t match the outcome, and while “Wall-E” dances whimsically, it’s a plodding, frighteningly hypocritical, and forbidding film that trips over its fogged intentions at every dreary turn.

It’s 800 years into the future, and Earth is left in a pile of ruins, with garbage piled as high as skyscrapers and the landscape a sickly shade of brown. The last robot left on the planet is Wall-E, a compactor machine who dutifully carries out his business cleaning up the land while he dreams of companionship, fueled by repetitive screenings of “Hello Dolly” and indulging his childlike curiosity whenever he can. Sent to Earth to retrieve signs of life is Eve, a probe droid who Wall-E is instantly smitten with, and the two form a startling bond. When Eve finds a plant sample on the dead planet, she’s snatched back to the pathetic remnants of the human race for questioning, leaving Wall-E ready to hitch a ride off Earth to remain with her.

It’s easy to become wrapped up in the light show director Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo”) fires off with “Wall-E.” It’s a film seemingly constructed with a mind toward pure simplicity: our hero, Wall-E, is a robot who only speaks in electronic tones, participates in plenty of slapstick inquisitiveness, and all he wants is love. It’s a veritable Pixar to-do list of elementary visual gags, and “Wall-E” indulges every scrap of physical comedy available for the first third of the picture (nearly completely free of dialogue), even handing the robot a traditional best pal of sorts in a loyal cockroach. This is the comfortable, reassuring padding that Pixar could accomplish with their eyes closed, with Wall-E decked out in full cute mode to help ease the audience into this bleak, post-apocalyptic world that few G-rated animated projects would dare consider.

Where “Wall-E” heads next is sure to divide audiences. Following Eve into space, Wall-E boards the “Axiom,” a huge cruise space ship that’s home to the loose ends of the human race. You see, in the 700-years since mankind bolted from Earth, they’ve evolved into overweight blobs of pudding, nurtured by the Buy-N-Large Corporation who use humans to feed the endless, aggressive cycles of profitable consumption, leaving them helpless and totally enslaved to commercial trends. The human characters are obese nincompoops who’ve lost the ability to walk eons ago, puttering around on floating chairs waiting impatiently for their next needless desire to be force fed to them by the all-powerful corporate machine.

Here’s where I remind everyone this is a Pixar/Disney picture. Pixar/Disney. Decrying greed.

It’s a pretty ballsy move to create a film condemning the culture of gluttony and corporate insatiability while indulging in those practices to market a film (kids, make sure to buy a Wall-E toy on the way out!), and it opens a can of worms that Stanton has no idea how to properly sort to dramatic satisfaction. “Wall-E” paints in massive brush strokes, attempting to educate younger audience members with horrific vistas of a polluted, wasted Earth and the overall piggish behavior of the humans, while also making sure Wall-E is endearing enough to use on games, toys, and stuffed animals so all concerned make a mint off of vulnerable family audiences.

If “Wall-E” was a scrappy independent film emerging from, say, the great Ralph Bakshi, the contrast and violent condemnation would’ve been a total gas. Coming from Pixar/Disney, it feels… discourteous, or, at the very least, corrosive and incompetent. The overall finger of intolerance is wagged with gale force winds here; a fascinating momentum lost on a picture easily 30 minutes overlong. “Wall-E” doesn’t have much adventure on its mind, nesting comfortably in the details of cutesy robot behavior and mad lunges toward audience sympathy, but there’s no dramatic spine keeping the film a riveting sit. Still, Stanton pushes forward, drawing out Wall-E’s lust past the expiration date and into full-out repetition.

I’m the first guy to applaud a Pixar film not entirely swathed in cliché, but the spark of the film is in constant threat of being snuffed out by the habitual elongation of the ice-thin story. I wasn’t moved by Wall-E’s Chaplinesque mishaps and intergalactic dreams, just agitated that Stanton doesn’t take the character past infantilization or offer something more than pratfalls for our hero to undertake. Wall-E’s shtick tires quickly.

To some, Wall-E is an adorable character with rich emotional professions, and that’s all the cinematic nutrition they need from this picture. I craved that sensation while watching “Wall-E,” but it never arrived. Instead I was left bored and insulted by a misguided, preachy film riddled with absurd messages and run into the ground by complete storytelling lethargy. But that Wall-E sure is cute, huh?

D+

Click here for a further discussion of this review.

Comments

[Benmark]

Yeah! Fuck Wall-E! Screw that shit disposal robot.

[fjdaklsjfs]

wow, reviewer has no heart

[Max]

Holy Hell...

Anyone who dislikes WALL-E should not be a critic at all. Please delete your review from RT, NOW.

[Al Fennwick]

This review is spot on.

Terrible movie, and all you idiots praising this movie are sheep. Watch the movie with even a shred of intellectual rigor and it's quite clear that this movie has no story.

Andrew Stanton, you blow as a writer/director. Time to find real stories and real directors to apply the Pixar animation machinery to.

You people with the mindless praise of this movie are the same ones that could elect George W Bush two times. Reading this review and your comments, it almost seems as if I'm seeing Neanderthals conversing with Homo Sapiens. The intelligence gap is startling.

[Rewind]

Y'know It is an irony that a movie that attempts to show us a serious environmental issue and how stupid we'd be if we succumb to social anxiety (the I want to/be syndrome cuz it is popular or cuz some bigshot/s say)comes from a company who is also know to offend in these ways.

I wish your review of transformers was just as harsh brian.

[toxicwaist]

I haven't even seen Wall-e but the juvenile comments alone made by those who loved the film is enough to erase any desire I have to see it. It amazes me how angry stupid people get when one disagrees with popular opinion.

[toxicwaist]

I haven't even seen Wall-e but the juvenile comments alone made by those who loved the film is enough to erase any desire I have to see it. It amazes me how angry stupid people get when one disagrees with popular opinion.

[Caroline]

I hope WALL-E ends up on the Best Picture Nod. If it doesn't, I will not watch the oscars.

What is wrong with a preachy movie? WALL-E gave a lot of valuable lessons, isn't that what good films suppose to do? If you don't like a film just because it is peachy and shows possible truth, this proves that you have a inconsiderate heart and cannot accept reality. If you can't accept reality, then you cannot survive in this world.

WALL-E costed 180,000,000 to make, just as much as the Dark Knight. So many people worked so hard on it. Ben Burtt did amazing voice design, Stanton wrote his most daring script, the computer graphics were realistic (with the exception of the human characters), Newman did a beautiful themed score (WHY DID HE NOT GET A NOD FOR BEST MUSIC AT THE ANNIES?!), etc.,etc.
I also find WALL-E to be better than Beauty and the Beast. That was a great movie, but WALL-E told the better story.

WALL-E is not one of the bloated romance films like the great, but overrated Titanic. Titanic did nothing but circled around Jack and Rose romance. There were many things going on beside WALL-E's and EVE's romance- There was a lethargic society, a polluted Earth, and machines discovering life. And WALL-E romance with EVE affected humanity.

WALL-E is certainly better than Kung Fu Panda. Kung Fu Panda only took 130 million to make. Kung Fu Panda is certainly funnier, but comedy is not enough to define a good movie. Kung Fu Panda had a excellent storyline, but it is what it is, it was only meant to make children laugh and enjoy it. Kung Fu Panda is not of the universal. Young children will love the cuteness of WALL-E, and teens and adults will love the allegorical story.

Dreamworks may be funnier, but Pixar suceeds in mixed comedy with out-of-this world storylines. Storylines matter more than comedy.

Because you think comedy defines how good a movie is, you are one of those inconsiderate people who give no damn toward the hard effort.

What use is an Annie Award to WALL-E? WALL-E is no animated movie, it's a romance made by animation. Saying that WALL-E is an animated movie is discriminating.

If WALL-E doesn't show up on the Best Picture category, I will never watch the Oscars again. Mark my words.

[Charlie]

I thought this was a sweet little movie that was fun for the whole family to watch together. Indeed, I'ts the best movie I saw in 2008.

You have your opinion dude - and I have mine.

[Ashay]

"Agreeing to Disagree" - that is the greatest thing to be learned by this world to be able to live peacefully and harmoniously and yet improving and innovating at the same time. When readers post things like "fuck yourself" or "damn you", they are just displaying their immature and childish behavior. If we Pixar fans (I am one myself and, no, I did not like Wall . E. It's not up to Pixar's standards) need to learn anything from Pixar itself, is that one need only keep improving and not think one's infallible. Let's face it - blunders happen. Rising after a fall is more graceful and honorable than to fall and not know you have fallen. Pixar is one of the greatest animation houses ever, and I don't deny that. But Pixar has fallen and it must rise!

You have bravely penned down your reviews honestly. And standing up against something when you have got a zillion opponents needs courage! And I throughly commend you for that!

Don't ever lose it! It's becoming rarer by the day!