Summer Movie Review: WALL●E
Jul. 5th, 2008 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatcrazycajunTook in yet another Big Summer Movie at nearby Phipps Plaza while waiting for the evening fireworks display at Lenox Square Mall (and where were you guys, joyeuse13 ? I looked for y'all several times). This time it was the latest collaboration between the Walt Disney Studios and the Steve Jobs-co-founded Pixar Animation Studios, the folks who brought you some of MouseCorp's biggest money makers of the past decade or so (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., etc., etc.), an ecological/futuristic fable called WALL●E.
Verdict? Go see it. And check out the eerily realistic actual website of the film's fictional megacorp, built by Disney for the movie.
Next up: either The Incredible Hulk or next week's Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and The Dark Knight; stay tuned...
joyeuse13 ? I looked for y'all several times). This time it was the latest collaboration between the Walt Disney Studios and the Steve Jobs-co-founded Pixar Animation Studios, the folks who brought you some of MouseCorp's biggest money makers of the past decade or so (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., etc., etc.), an ecological/futuristic fable called WALL●E.The story, Pixar's most overtly science-fictional one to date, is set on an Earth over seven centuries hence, when every last human has left the planet to live (if you can call it that) on ginormous spaceliners, having made their homeworld far too polluted to remain safely. The focus is on the title character, a robot whose name is an acronym (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class) and who is apparently the last of its kind still functioning on the deserted planet. WALL●E leads a rather boring existence of compacting and stacking trash, livened up only by its sole living companionship—a pet cockroach which my Songbird will no doubt still be icked out by, no matter how stylized and friendly—and by a hobby of collecting odd human-left artifacts. All this changes when a sleek probe ship lands near WALL●E's base, and a gleaming white-shelled robot called EVE disembarks to locate any sign of organic life having resumed on Earth.
The animation and design are as slick and gorgeous as one would expect from a studio that's had more than 10 years and almost as many films to perfect both techniques and software. The plot cannot help but remind some of us of an earlier eco-fable, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, but is fairly well executed and does not suffer in comparison. It is somewhat jarring to see actual live-action humans in the promotional recordings shown on Earth and aboard the spaceship, produced by the megacorp that had taken over not only all business but also all government on Earth prior to the great disaster (Fred Willard plays the CEO, with a podium and sign behind him designed to resemble those used by the President of the US in the White House), when the humans living in space are shown as over-fed, under-exercised blobs of CGI fat (a commentary on our obesity problem to go with the one on our polluting habits?). Pixar's perennial good-luck charm, John "Cliff Clavin" Ratzenberger, does indeed show up once more as the voice of one of the ship's residents. The sounds created to form the "voices" of EVE and WALL●E are easily the most expressive collection of beeps and tweets since those of R2-D2 (thank you, Ben Burtt). And the BnL logo that appears at the very end of the closing credits, complete with jingle, is just plain creepy, but a nice touch. (Am I the only one who sees the irony in a movie about a megacorp taking over everything being made by one of real life's biggest entertainment/retail megacorps? Just asking.)
The animation and design are as slick and gorgeous as one would expect from a studio that's had more than 10 years and almost as many films to perfect both techniques and software. The plot cannot help but remind some of us of an earlier eco-fable, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, but is fairly well executed and does not suffer in comparison. It is somewhat jarring to see actual live-action humans in the promotional recordings shown on Earth and aboard the spaceship, produced by the megacorp that had taken over not only all business but also all government on Earth prior to the great disaster (Fred Willard plays the CEO, with a podium and sign behind him designed to resemble those used by the President of the US in the White House), when the humans living in space are shown as over-fed, under-exercised blobs of CGI fat (a commentary on our obesity problem to go with the one on our polluting habits?). Pixar's perennial good-luck charm, John "Cliff Clavin" Ratzenberger, does indeed show up once more as the voice of one of the ship's residents. The sounds created to form the "voices" of EVE and WALL●E are easily the most expressive collection of beeps and tweets since those of R2-D2 (thank you, Ben Burtt). And the BnL logo that appears at the very end of the closing credits, complete with jingle, is just plain creepy, but a nice touch. (Am I the only one who sees the irony in a movie about a megacorp taking over everything being made by one of real life's biggest entertainment/retail megacorps? Just asking.)
Verdict? Go see it. And check out the eerily realistic actual website of the film's fictional megacorp, built by Disney for the movie.
Next up: either The Incredible Hulk or next week's Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and The Dark Knight; stay tuned...
