Movie Review: Wall-E

Wall-E (which stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth class) is the last robot left on earth to tidy up the mess after all the humans have gone to dirty up space. He is a silent, sweet creature with a cockroach for a pet and is nostalgic for the old junk that he finds as he does his work. There is one thing missing in his life however - love and companionship - as modelled on the characters from his favourite movie Hello Dolly. Perhaps the sleek new robot who arrives out of the sky one day could be exactly what he's looking for?

Wall-E is the latest in Pixar's excellent stable of top notch animated movies. As always, the visuals do not disappoint. There is very little dialogue in this film, but as they say, a picture tells a thousand words. The personalities of the robots are developed with each little twitch and blink of their robotic bodies and I think the animators deserve an Oscar for making them so lovable with body language alone. The depictions of the abandoned earth are also excellent and I couldn't help but wish that I Am Legend had cgi as good. The mixture of the live action footage and the animation I thought jarred and I disliked the cartoony images of the future humans, which I felt let down the film as a whole. As far as the story goes, it is ambitious in dealing with love, loss, and the lassitude of the human race. However it does not have a strong plot within those themes and I am suspicious it will not have as great a rewatch value as their other movies. I also found Wall-E very sad and came out of the cinema quite depressed. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it very much, but it didn't live up to the greats like The Incredibles and Ratatouille for me. 3 out of 5 stars.