Wall-E (Widescreen Single-Disc Edition) | List Price: $29.99
Discount Price: $12.85
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Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
Binding: DVD
Release Date: 2008-11-18
One-third of a really good film SPOILERS!!! [Posted on 2008-12-31]
SPOILERS!!!
Well, it's certainly a nice film, upbeat with a happy ending and a simple resolution to an insoluble set of problems. Basically, it's a three-segment TV show, the first segment (Wall-E and Eve) being the best; the second and third introducing the space ship Axiom, its captain, passengers, and robots, and then resolving a conflict between the Captain and his evil robot auto-pilot about returning to Earth for the happy ending. The three segments are loosely linked together by the quasi-romance between Wall-E and Eve set up in the first segment, but there is a real conflict within the film itself between two faces of the story: Wall-E and Eve on a nearly destroyed Earth, and the cartoony battle between the Captain and the minions of the evil auto-pilot.
It's easy to be critical about the second and third segments. They're cartoony to the max, they lack character development of any kind for the Captain and the Auto-Pilot, they resolve into the happy ending without any explanations. For example, how come the Captain can transform from an ignorant fat slob to the hero who leads his ship back to Earth? Unlike the subtle and nuanced portrayal of Wall-E and Eve, neither the Captain or the Auto-Pilot have any reasons for what they do. Auto-Pilot is merely evil -- but why should an autopilot program behave like that? -- and is destroyed far too easily for a machine that can operate the entire ship. These flaws are not repaired by frequent references to recent U.S. politics -- the president of the BNL Corporation sounds exactly like George W. Bush; the "Green" theme is hand-wavingly clichéd; the use of commercial themes like the power-up chord of the Mac computer is too local to have any meaning for an isolated world on a spaceship 700 years in the future. In segments two and three, the film makes a wrenching downshift to U.S. television animation, for example, in its much too easy parody of obese Americans lounging in beach chairs.
Also notable is the shift in animation technique and meaning between the first segment and the second two. The first is done in ultra-realist animation, in sepia, tans, and browns, with skillful and sometimes strikingly surreal images of huge monuments of compressed trash. Wall-E collects odd remnants of human history, and I was hoping -- vainly, as it turned out -- for a resolution/explanation of his preservation of toys, dolls, a beautifully-rendered Zippo lighter (it still has lighter fluid after 700 years -- a wonderful touch!), and almost poignant clips from old musicals and operettas. But instead of taking Wall-E and Eve on a journey to find what these things mean and to discover why Wall-E collects and treasures them, the film wrenches into the cartoony fat slob Captain -- and we lose all the previous and careful cinematic presentation of a world that seems doomed to die. So there can be no real epiphany of rebirth at the end, because the film-makers abandoned that world for the cartoony fat slob captain.
In parallel, the first segment has some impossibilities -- though I'm tempted to call them "mistakes," both factual and cinematic. One is that the world portrayed is not 700 years in the future. The future world of "Wall-E" is shown as having at least one seedling and having rain (for example, there's a thunderstorm) -- and in biological reality the world and its garbage-compactor cities of cubes of trash therefore would be an overwhelming mass of greenery (that seedling came from a seed; seeds come from mature trees; there would accordingly be plants everywhere). So we mentally change both the time frame and botanical reality to accept the plausibility the vision we are shown of a world depopulated of humans and inhabited only by cockroaches and robots. Into that world comes Eve -- and we want to know how they will resolve the story. Obviously, fat slob captains are not the answer.
So "Wall-E" is one-third of a fine -- very good indeed -- setting for a cinematographic story that is not resolved and never reaches the epiphany it deserves. And so we, the viewers, are left at the end smiling and chuckling at the wittiness (?) of animating fat cartoony captains, and are deprived of what could have been a genuinely first-class animated film.
Disappointing [Posted on 2008-12-31]
Very disappointing. I found it boring and had a hard time sitting through the whole thing. The basic plot may have some content and a hint of morality with its warnings about trashing planet earth, but it comes through as a slow moving sequence of images with no meaningful dialogue. Having said that my 3-year old still likes it.
The cardboard DVD case is also flimsy and would not last long in a household with children.
Hold on folks, this isn't even close to a masterpiece [Posted on 2008-12-31]
I love Pixar, but everyone preaching that Wall-E is some sort of modern masterpiece is making me sick.
Now the movie wasn't horrible, but come-on folks - it's nothing to tell your friends about and I certainly wouldn't watch it again.
I would actually say it's one of Pixar's poorest movies yet. Poor story, poor animation, poor music. Well ok, it was a horrible story. Haven't we seen/read/watched this same story a dozen times before? Add robots and it's new, right?
Reviewman says: Bargain DVD rack if you really need to buy it, got mine used for six bucks and feel I overpaid.
Surprising Animation [Posted on 2009-01-01]
For an animated movie, I did not expect much, but Wall-E has met the hype surrounding it and proved to be a beautiful love story and a nice critique on human nature.
Of course, it made you feel good toward the end too.
Fantastic production, but the story line is a bit thin [Posted on 2009-01-01]
WALL-E sets new standards for computer-generated animation. This movie is just fantastic in that regard; I often had to remind myself that nothing you see on-screen is real in a physical sense. That said, I can't quite give WALL-E five stars because most of the time it's all style with little or no substance. The second half contains some entertaining riffs on "2001," but for long stretches there's just a lot of frenetic action for action's sake. I enjoyed this movie, and would recommend it to just about anyone, but I wish there had been more substance to match the spectacular production values!
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