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The Short Version: Very different from most films, as the story is mostly told with pictures instead of dialogue. Despite some oddities in the plot it all works, evoking a magical feeling. 7 out of 10. Click Read More for our thoughts.
Having recently watched the movie The Happening, when WALL-E first started rolling I began to dread that this was yet another Anthropomorphic Global Warming flick. After all, the Earth is in a mess entirely caused by mass commercialization and lack of human caring. Fortunately, this is merely the backdrop for a SciFi love story. Love st...wha? I thought this was a movie about a robot with a personality that goes on a galactic romp? Apparently, not. Instead we enter as humanity has abandoned Earth in an Ark-like spaceship called Axiom, developed by global corporation Big N Large. Earth is a total mess,but B-N-L has left a robotized cleanup crew. Unfortunately for Earth, after centuries of work this crew is mostly "dead" with its robot denizens reduced to a single WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class). Unaware of the passage of time, WALL-E continues his job as gamely as possible. But WALL-E has developed a software glitch: a personality. Like Will Smith in "I Am Legend," the robot is all alone save for his animal companion...a cockroach. Yes, that's right. A cockroach. But, hey, it works and this cockroach comes off as cute. Cute and apparently indestructible. WALL-E passes his time making skyscrapers of trash and collecting oddball items he finds interesting. Rather than being attacked by zombies, WALL-E must contend with a different type of intruder...woman! This female is EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), and like some femi-nazis has a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. (Please email all hatemail to news at icepowered.com) While EVE is focused entirely on her mission, a prime directive, WALL-E follows her around. When EVE finds her target, she shuts down until pickup, and WALL-E cares for her during that time...which she discovers later on. And thus launches (literally via rocket) an adventure into the great beyond, with humanity's future at stake. I'll not spoil the rest of the plot, but I will say it was slightly disappointing. Then again, I should not expect a convoluted plot based upon Pixar's target audience...but that did not stop The Incredibles, with both the backdrop and the character interaction being interesting in their own right. Still, the growing love between the two robots is the real story.
The engaging characters is where the magic happens. While the two main robots do have eyes of sorts, which wonderfully serve an array of emotions, and both emit sounds that form a limited vocabulary, the main art of the storytelling takes place with the "body language". Without a sound the audience is engaged, telling us everything we need to know. One could almost say this is one of Pixar's short films extended to feature length. And that's not a bad thing. I felt at moments the movie reached the stars...but eventually it had to come back down to Earth. 7 out of 10.
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