Review: Wall-E

Wall-E is one of those movies that people love to gush over; where a cute something with no voice of it’s own falls in love with the notion of love and then overcomes everything just to get his limited groove on.  Sometimes there is dancing, sometimes there is singing, sometimes there is some chaste kissing; however it is always stulifying and boring.  Great for the kids, right?

Let me summarize Wall-E for those of you who have not seen it or refuse to do so, as you are principled people who don’t need Cartoon Robots to feel good about

Hello Dolly Song !

Fly-in through Garbage

There’s alot of Garbage

More Garbage, set to Hello Dolly Tune

Big Wall-E! Big Wall-E

Fat People all over the place

Fat Babies!

More Garbage

Hello Dolly Tune

End.

I don’t know if that is what some people took from it, but that’s about it for me. There was no there, there.  Even for a kids movie, this was pretty pointless.  Pixar has been pretty good about avoiding the “Song And Dance” methodology of Disney flicks, but only through having soundtrack montages and so on.  It’s still a baseless little story about a crazy robot who wants nothing more than to “hold hands” with someone.  It’s like American Pie, without the Stiffler or the Shannon Elizabeth.

The empty story is dressed in some nice clothes, but it’s fairly empty.  I know the guys at Pixar worked very hard to build pathos for Wall-E; but in the end he is just a malfunctioning robot who has become obsessed with fulfilling his own dreams.  Wall-E isn’t saving humanity, that’s not even in his scope, he’s obsessed with achieving the one thing that he has built up over years of watching Hello Dolly over and over, holding hands.  At least Eve focuses on her actual function over self-gratification.

The Animation is passable, but it’s not ground-breaking for 3D animation and does little to further 3D movies as an artform or medium.   I didn’t find any portion of the film to be breathtaking (save breathtakingly stupid or vapid)  and I couldn’t get over the details that ruined the whole premise.  Why would the robot repair all of the advertising but not dig up all the garbage from around it?  Why does the robot “go back” to his house rather than move to closer to his work site? Why didn’t the robot build a wind-proof baffle around his little home so that he could leave the door open?  Why didn’t he build a shelter for Eve? These little things detracted from the experience, it’s just poor storytelling when you can actually visually build anything and don’t simply solve these little logical problems right there on film.

Wall-E is a film about garbage that barely rises above it’s oeuvre.  I’d say it’s okay for the kids, but only the youngest seem to want to watch it over and over.  Go watch Monsters Inc. or Iron Giant instead, there’s a movie with real heart and emotion.