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Before commencing on a glowing review of WALL·E, a film which was originally only a concept poised for being developed as a classic short and not a feature film, the actual miniscule segment of this traditional Pixar release deserves a special mention. Presto, the first of the standard loose double feature from the animation masters is a snippet of a frenzied argument between a magician and a rabbit over a carrot. It's a simplistic foundation for an explosive few minutes of high octane slapstick which warrants the price of cinema admission by itself.
Now on to the main event after that brief interlude and Pixar's ninth feature film. Andrew Stanton, one of the beloved studio's ultra-successful disciples - Finding Nemo, the talented perfectionist's first film as a sole director won one of those special golden naked men - has crafted such an intricate yarn that touches upon so many different genres, subjects and societal messages that it's difficult to digest, analyse and critique. WALL·E is arguably the most daring film you will see all year. Pixar, the juggernauts of animation with a Beatlesesque success rate of quality - all of their features can't quite reach the level of 'outstanding chef d'oeuvre' but they are never deemed failures commercially or critically by any stretch - lay it all on the line, reputation, records and artistic integrity, for an experimental stab at a story which examines how a robot 700 years in the future cleans up Earth.
This is a film without any dialogue for vast amounts of time aside from the recurring couple of numbers from Hello, Dolly! our solar-powered hero has for company and the repetitive (in a good way) rumblings of "WALLLLLLL---EEE!" and "EVVVVVVE!" - the constant exclamations of the names is in no way as annoying as the continuous cries of "Rob!" in Cloverfield. If then, watching a robot scurry around a vacant planet and making cubes out of scrap metal doesn't sound like an orthodox method of grabbing the attention of the kiddies and filling them with glee like Buzz and Woody did all those years ago, and let us not forget that infants are always partly going to make up Pixar's target audience whether they like it or not, then the nods to Aldous Huxley, Stanley Kubrick and Philip K. Dick (and professional wrestling legend "Nature Boy" Ric Flair if you count the loose referencing of the classical "Also sprach Zarathustra") will leave impatient souls with a strong dislike for the film from an extremely early stage. Even Sigourney Weaver's ironic role-reversal turn as the voice of a spaceship's computer has strong connotations with Alien. Delicate nuances are the order of the day and they all work perfectly if you wander into the auditorium with your sociological hats on ready to concentrate.
WALL·E is a character who demands audience concentration and emotional investment. To the uneducated who do not understand the intertextual referencing and/or satirical elements of the film or maybe do not even grasp the fact that films can include such messages, the basic laughs that fill time in other Pixar films and DreamWorks efforts to parachute a downturn in entertainment level are simply not as obvious as usual. When you've finished treating WALL·E like a present day E.T. by sighing with a tinge of isn't-he-so-weirdly-cute-and-adorable, the guffaws keep coming. Whether the protagonist is by himself in the wilderness of the deserted planet we call home inadvertently injuring himself with the numerous objects he finds, or when the overweight toddler-like grown-ups are introduced aboard a state-of-the-art spaceship (the Axiom is like a more commercialized Blade Runner cityscape inside a single gigantic unit) light years away being waited on hand and foot, jokes flow with typical Pixar ease, both visual- and dialogue-orientated.
Remember The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes"? The build-up to the outstanding crescendo faultlessly aids to said climax in a similar way to how WALL·E pottering around Earth and yearning for companionship with Eve, a robot with a directive to venture to Earth and see if it's ready to sustain life and maintain human life once more, acts as a neat prologue to the eventual launch of the human angle. This is the point where our hero has a Spielbergian tendency - a child has the power to rescue the brainwashed adults in a nice satirical arc.
WALL·E is a thinly disguised message for all the environmentalists, but Stanton never detracts from the main theme of saving humanity amid a touching love story. There are moments when you think a scene could have played out a bit better with more comedic undercurrents but this is a minor complaint which unfortunately means Pixar's adventure can't quite score a maximum. Those binocular lenses WALL·E uses for eyes though are as enchanting as anything Pixar (or Disney for that matter) have ever created.
The summary
It is likely that WALL·E's reputation will grow over time as a shining example of stretching the animation art form by challenging the expectations of its audience and bravo to Pixar for still creating an entertaining story. Sheer charm and sentiment.
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