A waste allocation robot's typical routine would read as such: Clean up, compact, and organize trash. Make sure to keep all fascinating objects and always look out for the cockroach. Never forget your lunchbox – you might need it for storage. When the afternoon is over, return the day's catch back to home base, sunbathe, and watch old musicals. Sporks are complicated.
Wall-E is Pixar studio's 9th straight blockbuster following the success of Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Montser's Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and Ratatouille. It is also their first movie that works well as a science fiction film. The story focuses on an eccentric and curious robot called Wall-E (stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth) who is left to clean up Earth's massive piles of trash after the humans leave on a luxurious space cruise. Wall-E and a single cockroach are the only beings inhabiting the planet when a sleek new robot named Eve (stands for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) arrives looking for plant life. The two robots hit it off in their own way and are soon caught in a quirky and funny space adventure involving a fast food obsessed human race, defective robots, fire extinguishers, and a plant in a shoe.
As you can imagine from this summary, the story advances pretty sporadically. The plot's driving force is a series of random mishaps and occurrences that involve a character with only a vague goal of saving his damsel in distress. While inefficiency would kill most movies, it only seems to give Wall-E more charm. It matches the robot's spontaneous personality.
Like most animated films these days, Wall-E has a story line that appeals to both adults and kids. While kids enjoy talking robots and space odysseys, adults can be satisfied with interesting themes and intelligent situational comedy. But everyone loves that little robot. He is an infectious character with a delightful curiosity. This success is mainly due to Pixar's meticulous attention to detail. From Wall-E's complicated physical design full of mechanical eyebrow raises and fidgeting pronged fingers to his ridiculous mannerisms and habits – every bustling, tinkering part of him is brimming with personality. This is especially impressive considering the fact that he engages in very little dialogue. In fact both Wall-E and Eve are limited to mimicking, pointing, and a few words here and there. Neither of them even speaks a full sentence along the course of the movie, but it's surprisingly natural.
The movie does seem to drag at times but it's not the lack of dialogue that makes it seem slow. It's the lack of characters. Wall-E and Eve are the only major characters and their story lines are not busy enough to move the plotline at a good pace. This would have been a disastrous side effect for a 2-hour movie, but is only a minor setback for Wall-E, which clocks in at about 97 minutes. Despite this, Wall-E is an interesting science fiction film, a witty and disturbing satire on consumerism, and a cute animated love story all orbiting the curious whims of an adorable character. B+
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