The droid you’re looking for
‘Wall-E’
Director: Andrew Stanton
Cast: Jeff Garlin, Sigourney Weaver, Fred Willard
Rating: G
Grade: 5 Globes
“Wall-E” is the sort of film that could inspire gushing, hyperbolic praise from critics jaded enough to know better.
Let’s get in on the act: Just over half-way through the calendar, this flick has emerged as the best picture of 2008. If it still holds that status at the end of the year, it will hardly be a surprise.
Damn, that feels good.
The newest offering from Disney’s Pixar — the folks who every year add some digitally produced wonder into the “best animated feature ever” debate — is that studio’s crowning achievement, as visually breathtaking as “Fantasia” and narratively daring as a David Lynch film.
Yes, that last part is pushing it, but less than you might think. How many post-apocalyptic sci-fi films would open with “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” from “Hello Dolly!”? How many children’s movies would feature almost zero dialogue in the first 30 or so minutes? How many Disney flicks would have the balls to depict the human race as a bunch of morbidly obese saps controlled by a dead ringer for Wal-Mart?
“Wall-E” takes place seven centuries after humanity’s flight from a pollution-saturated, uninhabitable Earth, whose lone post-exodus inhabitant is the titular trash-compacting robot. Of course, seven centuries is long enough for even the best robot to develop a few quirks in his programming, so it’s easy to infer how Wall-E came to act like a perfect cross between E.T. and R2-D2. When our ridiculously adorable hero falls for a sleek-looking probe droid sent from afar, he is set on a collision course with the last vestiges of humanity (whom he finds to be a half-step better off than their counterparts in the “Matrix” trilogy).
“Wall-E” may be accused of indulging in cutesy robot love, but it’s a welcome indulgence. The love between these two plush-toy-ready robots is unavoidably cute.
Every year dozens of live-action films feature far more implausible love stories. There’s more earnestness, more depth of feeling in Wall-E’s romance with EVE than in just about anything starring the so-called great leading men and women of this bleak era in film-romance history.
This is a virtuoso movie — a classic of children’s films and a classic in general. Say it enough, and you won’t be embarrassed doing so.