Well actually, it stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-Class, but make no mistake, WALL-E is all of that and more!
On Friday, July 4th, my sister, cousin, and I went to go see Pixar-Disney's new piece of brilliance: WALL-E with very high expectations. We saw the hilariously cute trailers involving the most adorable little machine ever animated and thought that this was going to be the best animated movie Pixar has ever made. Forget what we thought, because in my personal opinion, it is the best animated movie ever made, period. All of my expectations were met and launched to heights I never even dreamed of.
Even if I did not like the movie, I would pay the insane price for a movie ticket just to see the Pixar animated short at the beginning of the movie entitled Presto. It his hands down the funniest animated short out of all nine Pixar movies about a magician, his hat, and the bunny that appe--- well, is supposed to appear out of it. The animation in it is superb and cartoony, and even with zero dialogue, I still fell out of my seat laughing.
Now back to WALL-E.
The first element I need to talk about is the story. You may go into this movie thinking it is going to be another cutesy plot from the writers at Pixar, but in fact, it is one of the most ominously scary plots I've ever seen in a movie. It really depicts humanity and Earth's downfall in a future that isn't exactly too far off with incredibly accurate detail. This is also the first Pixar movie that includes live-action characters, which works perfectly with the current/future state the humans are in. The ongoing story is all about how Earth is unliveable after the humans left it and whether or not they can go back. Oh, did I mention that's the subplot?!
What really matters in this movie is WALL-E's story. WALL-E is just doing his job in cleaning up the Earth one little bit at a time, while collecting fun little things that interest him along the way This includes the central item of the movie which I will not reveal, but also an absolutely adorably naive scene where he finds a box with a diamond ring it, and throws away the ring because of how interesting the box is. And then EVE shows up in the blink of a rocket ship landing, and changes his life forever. While she too is there just doing the job assigned to her, WALL-E is struck by her and shows her his way of life. Of course, no love story is complete without tragedy as he must rescue her as she is called back from her original location, unlocking a very odd and somewhat depressing part of human future-history. But WALL-E never tries to save humanity, this is not an epic rescue story, this is a brilliantly romantic love story which a bunch of mishaps along the way.
What can I say about the acting except there is an eight person cast! Eight; count 'em: 8. For a movie of these proportions, an eight person voice cast is almost unheard. Actually forget eight, it actually has 7 cast members and the MacInTalk software as the character AUTO. The actors that play the humans are quite good, especially Fred Willard of TV fame as the live-action Shelby Forthright, but the real stars are the voices behind WALL-E and EVE: Ben Burtt and Elyssa Knight. Their voices, although obviously helped with software, are incredibly original, wonderful, and cute. Also, they are 100% unimitatible, believe me, I've tried. This movie however doesn't need to rely on dialogue at all for the story to make sense or be as amazing as it was.
One element that all movies need is a brilliant score and soundtrack. Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel do not disappoint with incredibly wonderful, classically futuristic scores and songs that make the movie even more wonderful. I also enjoy the several jazz songs that WALL-E finds along the way, particularly a beautiful sequence involving "La Vie en Rose" performed by the late great Louis Armstrong. And then of course there are the songs borrowed from the Hello Dolly! movie video, which give the movie a whole other level of cute, especially when WALL-E plays "It Only Takes a Moment" and when he dances along to "Put on Your Sunday Clothes".
Now let's talk about the element that Pixar always and no matter what gets a Grade A+ on: animation. I don't understand how they can one-up themselves every year. The maps and characters were so incredibly realistic, I couldn't believe my eyes. All of the animation that takes place in outer space however can only be described with one word: poetic. A scene which I'm sure all fans of the trailers have seen is where he traces his hand along the stars, but a scene you will enjoy even more is the dancing scene in outer space (which I won't ruin for you, but that along with the song co-composed by Newman and Gabriel...I nearly cried in happiness).
You will laugh, you may cry depending on your emotional range, but overall you will walk out of there incredibly stunned at the masterpiece that is WALL-E. No doubt, you have never seen a movie like it, it is far too original. In my personal opinion, although it will hands down win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, like that does not even require thought; but I believe that it has a chance for being the second animated film to be nominated for Best Picture. As the cast of Hello, Dolly! sing in one of the main songs from WALL-E: "It only takes a moment, to be loved a whole life long." In this case it took 98 minutes, which passed by in one swift moment that I never wanted to end.
/5Mike Wisniowski
1 comment:
wow !
you had a great perspective on the movie. I completly and totally agree with almost every single word you said.
The reason i say "almost" is because i didn't exactly finish reading it :P
it was a bit to long for my taste...
keep up the great work !!
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