Film Review: WALL-E (2008) - Revisited

Co-Writer/Director: Andrew Stanton
Running time: 90 mins (approx)
Certificate (UK): U

Genre: Animation/Comedy/Adventure
UK Release Date: 18^th July 2008

Watched on Sky+ Monday 30^th May 2011.

PLEASE NOTE: POSSIBLE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW.

As I may have mentioned before, I’m quite a big fan of animated films. I have some friends who will only watch anime, but I have a much broader palate. I wasn’t going to watch this today when it came up on TV as I had seen it before, but I got enchanted by it all over again and ended up sitting all the way through it (again).

All life has left the Earth, it sounds pretty bleak, but it’s not really, they’ve gone on a big space ship while an army of robots cleans up the place. And now, some 800 years later, there’s only one robot left, Wall-e. He spends his days collecting and compacting the garbage and making enormous towers out of it. He’s not alone though, and insect, probably a cockroach, is his companion. Wall-e lives in the back of an old truck, where, apart from a bunch of spare parts, he also has a collection of interesting things he’s found over the years. Amongst these is a video of an old musical that he plays every night, and a plant that he found.

One day he’s going about his business when a spacecraft arrives and drops off another robot, EVE. After a bit of a sticky start, they begin to talk and Wall-e shows EVE around. She has spent most of her time going around scanning everything she sees, looking for something. Later, with a big storm brewing, Wall-e takes EVE to his ‘house’; he shows her some of the things he’s collected. When she sees the plant she immediately puts it inside her chest and shuts down. Wall-e is dumbfounded and tries to revive her, but fails. All he can do is wait with her until the spacecraft returns, which eventually it does. As it takes off, Wall-e stows away and he is taken to another, much larger ship, the Axiom where the humans are. This is where things start to get interesting, so I’ll leave it here.

This is a very well made film with some great comic touches, particularly in the opening scenes. The first third of the film was really engaging and very enjoyable, however, as soon as Wall-e and EVE make it to the Axiom it becomes slightly more predictable, which is a shame. There isn’t a great deal of dialogue, but it was all done well, honourable mentions go to the voice talents of, Ben Burtt as Wall-e & M-O, Elissa Knight as EVE and Jeff Garlin as Captain McCrea.

This is the second time I’ve seen this film and I can say I enjoyed it much more second time around. The filmmakers are great at giving characters to the robots, even though they cannot really talk properly. I found the opening scenes particularly good, although I didn’t much care for the song from the musical that they kept playing. I guess Wall-e is so appealing because he looks a little like the iconic alien, E.T. As I said, the latter scenes when they make it to the Axiom do get a little predictable, but I still found it very enjoyable… Recommended.

My score: 8.7/10

LINKS:
(RT=Rotten Tomatoes)
IMDb Page: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/
RT Page: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wall_e/
Official Site: http://adisney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/wall-e/
Trailer: