Wall-E

Pixar’s latest sci-fi animated feature film, WALL-E is Disney’s answer to Dreamwork’s Kung Fu Panda. To date, it has raked in over USD$163 million at the box office and is already garnering Oscar buzz for Best Picture (a first for an animated feature).

The film begins in a city ruined by commercialism, industrialism and every other ‘ism’ there is; the main culprit is mega-corporation Buy n’ Large. In an attempt to preserve human life; Buy n’ Large ships the earth’s inhabitants to outer space onboard the Axiom, leaving behind sole functioning robot WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-Class). Powered by solar energy, WALL-E spends his days compacting the city’s garbage and fantasising about love while watching Hello, Dolly!. One day he meets EVE (Extraterrestial Vegetation Evaluator), a probe sent to earth to recover plant life. EVE is to WALL-E what a modern Mac is to an old Mac (note the robots’ boot sounds). Immediately, WALL-E is love struck by her sleek build, hi-tech scanners and retractable plasma cannon. But EVE is only concerned with the “directive” to seek plant life, which WALL-E later presents to her. Completing her mission, she goes into hibernation and is retrieved by her mother ship. True to the phrase ‘star crossed lovers’, WALL-E follows her to outer space back to the Axiom. There we discover that the humans have been grown obese and lazy over the 700 years in outer space. Chaos ensues as the two battle the Axiom’s autopilot, that’s preventing the ship from returning to earth.

WALL-E is an animation masterpiece. Director, Andrew Stanton made good use of that anamorphic lense to give us a real sense of depth and dimension  Simply put, Pixar managed to capture the essence of love and humanity through a bunch of robots and with minimal dialogue too! It’s definitely a must-see.

Cast Jeff Garlin, Elissa Knight Benjamin Burtt, Fred Willard, Kathy Najimy Director Andrew Stanton Runtime 98 minutes Opens 14 August

Text Didi Ramlan