Wall-E
Eco-friendly, pro-exercise and featuring a glorious use of a fire extinguisher, Wall-E sparks with genuine creativity.
Dir Andrew Stanton (G)
Arriving after the stellar triumph of Ratatouille, when Pixar could
surpass itself only by supersizing, Wall-E plays the remarkable gambit
of going minimal: the first half eschews dialogue, establishing our
presence on an abandoned Earth 700 years from now via meticulous design
work and a sensational soundtrack-much of it the vocal stylings of Ben
Burtt, who supplied R2-D2's beeps.
Our hero is Wall-E, an irrepressible, ET-ish trash compactor whose
start-up chord suggests he's a descendant of the Steve Jobs empire.
Lonely in a polluted city, he collects the detritus of the human age: a
Rubik's Cube, silverware, a VCR that only knows Hello, Dolly!
The arrival of mysterious robot Eve brings first a duel, then
courtship, then a journey into space, where - in a funnier but darker
corner of the universe - the humans now reside. Mankind is
corporate-controlled, overweight and resigned to live in a kind of
pastel Matrix. (You'll also catch obligatory nods to Star Wars and
2001). Wall-E and Eve wind up bringing humanity back to the humans.
Eco-friendly, pro-exercise and featuring a glorious use of a fire
extinguisher, Wall-E sparks with genuine creativity.