Moose Review: Wall•E

In any movie studio other than Pixar, Wall•E would never have been greenlit. Or, if it had, the finished product would have been a manic and shallow offering filled with crude throwaway jokes and annoying characters (think Blue Sky's Robots). As it is, Andrew Stanton's unconventional movie is a resounding success, combining heart and intelligence into a technically perfect and emotionally satisfying package.

It's an unusual story. 700 years in the future, mankind lives in space, degenerated into blobby, full-grown infants who zip around in hoverchairs while robots carry out their every whim and pleasure. On earth, a single robot, Wall•E, continues the work of cleaning the land of the mountains of trash that cover it, amusing himself in his spare time by collecting trinkets and doodads left by the planet's former occupants. Everything is routine, until a sleek, white, Apple-esque female robot, E.V.E., appears. E.V.E. just wants to carry out her directive to search the planet for plant life, but Wall•E is smitten.

Wall•E works because it makes none of the usual assumptions about an audience's patience or intelligence. This isn't a movie created to pander to what studies say are an audience's taste. This is a movie that sprang out of the love of the creation of stories for their own sake. Every moment of the film feels lovingly hand-crafted; nothing is forced or out of place. Unconventionalities abound. There are long stretches without dialogue, and the film often moves at a slow but absorbing pace that I've rarely seen outside the works of Hayao Miyazaki. There are no trendy jokes, no jive talk, no potty humor. Wall•E is content to be the movie it is, and to trust the audience to give it a fair viewing. This very trust elevates it above the assembly-line flms of other studios.

Technically, every aspect of Wall•E is perfect. The animation is smooth and natural. The cinematography calls to mind live action science fiction films of the seventies and eighties. The sound production is first rate. Non-technical elements are just as good. The story is interesting, and humor abounds. But it's the portrayal of its characters that makes Wall•E great.

As in a Miyazaki film, the audience's total identification with the characters carries them through environments and situations that in another context would be bizarre. But even Miyazaki never worked with characters this far from human. Ben Burt's pitch-perfect sound design and what is certainly the best computer-animated acting ever combine to lend these mechanical characters a depth and warmth missing from most live action films. Despite their odd appearance and their only rudimentary vocalization skills, these robots are fully developed and likable characters, fascinating to watch and easy to root for. Even the secondary characters are original and interesting. Thank God, you won't find a single hip, fast-talking sidekick in this film.

Wall•E is many things. It's the peerless summit of computer-generated character animation. It's a brilliant send up of modern consumerism. It's a cautionary environmentalist tale. It's a science fiction adventure. At its heart, it's a sweet romance. And taken as a whole, it is a work of art.

Rating: five moose honks.