Wall-E

I was not impressed by the poster of Wall-E, thinking Pixar had run out of idea and to re-create another Robots. But after seeing critics from New York Times and Boston Globe giving it an A, and reading the critics themselves, I decided it is a shame not to see the movie. Critics from Boston Globe puts it as "a toy story that dares to say things our grown-up movies don't," and "by a substantial margin, the best American film of the year to date."

So the story starts at in the future when humans have abandoned Earth and orbiting in space for 700 years. While these humans live a sedated and meaningless lives in an all-too-comfy spaceship, Wall-E is the lone robot left on Earth still carrying out its directive as a "Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class", compacting and piling up garbage in a Earth city fill with trash and apparently no life but a cockroach. A.O. Scott of NY Times puts it "The first 40 minutes or so of “Wall-E” — in which barely any dialogue is spoken, and almost no human figures appear on screen — is a cinematic poem of such wit and beauty that its darker implications may take a while to sink in." The trashed Earth and the little sanctuary of Wall-E's are also rendered as real as it can ever be.

The story goes on with a high-tech robot sent from the spaceship to survey the Earth for any sign of revival. Wall-E falls in love with her, after "learning" to love from watching the worn-out video tape of Hello, Dolly! everyday after work. It is a sweet love story, and also a tribute to some great sci-fi movies, especially 2001: Space Odyssey. It goes from the red light core of Autopilot that is reminiscent of HAL-9000 to the standing-up act of the human pilot against Autopilot, imitating the stand-up act of the apes down to the dramatic music playing in the background.

I was listening to the radio on the way to my dentist today. Terry Gross's Fresh Air of NPR was interviewing Andrew Stanton, the director and writer of Wall-E, who also directed Finding Nemo. He said he didn't commission a music for Wall-E as most other big animates did because he wanted to get the feeling of remembering the good old things that Wall-E himself so keen on doing: collecting artifacts of the then lost civilization, such as rubber ducks, Zippo lighters, boots and the Rubik's cube. So he chooses Put on your Sunday Coat from Hello, Dolly! as the opening music played by the recorder of Wall-E himself while strolling down the trashed city, and Louis Armstrong's La Vie en rose.

If you are going to watch Wall-E, do not leave the theater when the credit rolls in. The half-motion pictures are part of the story.

Pixar has surely breaks new ground for both animation and story telling with Wall-E. It is also an declaration of Pixar identity after being acquired by Disney two years ago.

p.s. The sound designer who creates the robotic voices of the movie is Benjamin Burtt, who also created the sound of light sabers, R2D2 and the ominous breath of Darth Vader. He himself plays the voice of Wall-E.