Wall-E - A review
Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), left behind to clean up the planet after the last humans have left, develops a longing for a more sophisticated robot called Eve and together they travel across space so that Wall-E can be re-united with his makers.I had heard promising things about this film, including a claim that it would be nominated for Best Film at the next Academy Awards. It tries to put across a message about the dangers of failing to re-cycle all our waste, while trying to keep the kids laughing at the same time. The result is a film that contains elements of childhood entertainment and thought-provoking visions of our planet’s distant future, but the finished product doesn’t know for sure exactly what it is or who it’s aimed at. There’s very little dialogue for the first half of its 103 minutes, until the scene shifts to a massive spaceship moored somewhere in the solar system and which houses the entire human race. An interesting concept is that humans have evolved in such a way that they are physically much larger but have fewer bones in their bodies, because they don’t move or exercise at all as a result of their total dependency upon automatons (in dozens of different guises) to do all functions.
My conclusion was that this was too grown-up a tale for children, but too simplistic for adults. Children won’t understand the message that is being sent, as all they want is to enjoy a film. Adults won’t gain a thing in terms of knowledge because it is science FICTION, and not fact. If adults want to gain some insight into the planet’s future that is more factually based then I suggest they check out “An Inconvenient Truth” as it is far more focused - and credible - than this animated film. By trying to cover all bases (entertainment of kids, education for one and all) the result is a lukewarm success - and that’s probably being generous. I was also bothered by some physical similarities between Wall-E and E.T. - mostly the head shape from certain angles, and the eyes too; maybe no-one else will think of this but it crossed my mind and the thought would not go away. The symbolic touching of hands sealed it for me, which bordered on plagiarism. The quality of the animation was excellent but did not set a new standard. In a nutshell I was expecting the blockbuster of the year but it was merely quite good, and not a classic by any stretch. I sense that some people will hail its noble intentions but if you think about it, it’s fiction and what few facts it contains are none that we don’t already know. And most children under 10 will be rather underwhelmed; the theatre I was in was barely one-third full (at a peak viewing time) and despite the majority of watchers being kids it was strangely quiet throughout.
