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Wall-E

Movie details

Academy Award winning writer-director Andrew Stanton and the inventive storytellers and technical geniuses at Pixar Animation Studios transport moviegoers to a galaxy not so very far away for a new computer-animated cosmic comedy about a determined robot named "Wall-E". After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, Wall-E discovers a new purpose in life when he meets a sleek search robot named Eve. Eve comes to realise that Wall-E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans.

Director Andrew Stanton

Stars Fred Willard, Jeff Garlin, Ben Burtt

Our review

"Wall-E" was released in the States in June. So why have we had to wait almost three months for it to hit Australian cinemas? It's an inexcusable delay for a film which is one of the finest - if not the finest - that the geniuses at Pixar have ever produced.

Whether you'll love this movie or not really depends on how quickly you fall in love with its hero: Wall-E (a Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is the last robot left on a ruined, polluted Earth, which was long ago abandoned by humanity.

Though Wall-E has spent the last several hundred years stacking garbage into piles, somewhere along the line he's developed a personality - he carefully hoards the precious treasures he discovers amongst the refuse, has a cockroach as a friend, and watches an blurry tape of "Hello Dolly" every night before powering down.

Wall-E's childlike charms cannot be overstated: the first 20 minutes, in which we get to know him, are the best of the movie.

His daily routine is interrupted by the arrival of EVE, a much sleeker and more advanced robot. Wall-E is instantly smitten - though at first she's too preoccupied with finding new life on Earth to pay much attention to him.

Though he hardly speaks - and when he does, it's mostly digital clicks and whirs - Wall-E is the film's most human character. The people he and EVE do eventually encounter, when they venture into space in the second act, are obese, stupid blobs who've been ruined by corporate greed. (Which is an odd message to emerge from a Disney film, but it's best not to think about that.)

There's a warning there: that we should value the Earth, and each other. Some conservatives even attacked the film upon its US release, decrying its green-friendly, anti-consumerism plot, but the environmental theme is mostly thoughtful and subtle, only intruding into preachy territory in the very last minutes.

On a technical and visual level, "Wall-E" is astounding. The ruined Earth depicted in the opening scenes is so convincing you won't believe the animation can get any better... until Wall-E launches into space.

This is a gorgeous, immersive, one-of-a-kind film.

8/10

Samuel Downing