WALL-E (2008)

I was privileged to attend a preview of this latest Pixar film which has received nearly universal critical acclaim -- all thoroughly deserved.  However watching the movie in a mixed audience loaded with youngsters, I couldn't help wondering if this is a film that adults will find enchanting while kiddies couldn't care less.  The young lad sitting in front of me seemed to be spending his time playing video games on his mobile (if I'd been his parent, I would have confiscated it for the duration), while the group of girls to my left went out in the middle of the movie to purportedly buy sweets and didn't return until the near end.  I sincerely doubt that any of these kids was as enchanted with the film as Michael and I were.  Still given Pixar's track record the movie will almost certainly do well at the box office and on DVD, but I somehow don't see it becoming a movie which youngsters will watch and rewatch.

That is not to say that the film isn't absolutely brilliant and on so many levels probably the best animation ever to emerge from the studio.  Apart from ambient sound and carefully selected music, the first half of the movie is virtually silent.  Our eponymous hero is the last automated trash compactor left on a deserted and barren planet earth, but he is not just an empty machine.  He decorates his "home" with items salvaged from the trash and yearns for love and company, inspired by a clip from "Hello Dolly" which he watches over and over.  Into his world comes a robot probe from a space colony, a sleek white and destructive female called EVE, who has been sent to establish whether there are any signs warranting a return to the abandoned planet.  When she is taken back into her mother ship, WALL-E stows away and the final adventure begins.

When inordinate amounts of rubbish caused by the high powered marketing of an all-present corporation called Buy 'n Large resulted in earth being abandoned, life continued on a huge space ship where every need and desire was pandered to by the corporate masters, to the extent that humans grew fat and lazy and more or less lost their bone structure and mobility.  So here we have the gist of the tale -- it's a scathing indictment against our misuse of the planet and our own susceptibility to mega-marketing.  That the growing love between our two robots and the chaos they create manages to reverse 700 years of indolence is the film's message of hope.

With no dependence on celebrity voicing or cute little songs or furry animals (the only other survivor on earth is a cockroach), this is just pure and simply imaginative and amazing animation.  The movie is also loaded with cinematic references to other films, especially "2001", which again will appeal to the critics and to the adults in the audience but which will almost certainly pass right over the heads of the younger viewers.  It's a pity that the young boy sitting in front of me seemed to think that his game-player was better entertainment.  When he grows up, he might think differently.

WALL-E, Pixar