newcritics

Personally, I think one of the hardest challenges for a critic is high praise; when you love something, it’s hard not to go overboard. It’s easy to write a savage pan - just ask Rex Reed - but much harder, I think, to praise a work without drifting into the tendency to make something more than it is.

This thought initially occurred to me when I was writing a praise-ful review of the movie Starter for 10 on my own blog, but it comes back to haunt me as I think about writing a review of WALL-E. Critics are falling over themselves to lavish praise on Pixar’s latest film (much as they have with… well, pretty much every Pixar flick); and the danger, I think, is that such praise overstates what’s really happening in a light, charming summer film.

WALL-E is a visually rich, almost dialogue free film that does, yes, amaze. But suggesting, as some do, that the film is a searing indictment of corporate greed and waste, or a stunning eco-parable about our stewardship of the planet… is probably a stretch. At its heart - and it really does have one - WALL-E is all about love and the connections between all of us, man or machine.

And really, isn’t that enough?

Nothing, I think, demonstrates the power of WALL-E’s storytelling as much as its first 15 minutes, when a lot of expository detail - explaining how Earth came to be a vast wasteland, where all the people went, and the sole existence of our protagonist - is revealed in tight, short snippets of business. We are shown the vast retail edifices of a company called Buy N Large and quick snippets of holographic video regarding a “space cruise”, all through the smudgy lenses of WALL-E, a trash collecting and compacting robot who appears to be the last working one of his kind.

Here lies the real genius of the film: WALL-E is surely one of the great robot characters to ever appear on film. With only a limited range of movements, WALL-E is able to convey his feelings about his existence, and he generates a great deal of audience empathy. WALL-E doesn’t just make compact little trash cubes, he’s a collector and a packrat; each day he loads the little Igloo cooler he carries with items of trash he finds interesting: an old bra, ceramic trolls, christmas lights… and probably most significantly, an old videotape of Hello, Dolly! that he watches over and over (we are treated to “Put On Your Sunday Best” among other numbers… but no Streisand - which is probably a relief).

WALL-E’s world is forever changed with the arrival of EVA, an investigative droid scanning the planet for… something. It is, of course, love at first sight for WALL-E, even when EVA turns out to have a “shoot first, determine friendliness second” approach to meeting strangers - I mean, what’s cooler than a hot chick who’s armed to the teeth (and next, let’s review Angelina Jolie in Wanted, yes)? There’s a lovely moment when, in their bleep-y way, these two machines introduce themselves and begin a romance.

But all of this is merely prologue: it turns out WALL-E is in possession of the one thing EVA is actually searching for - signs of sustainable life on the planet (in his travels, WALL-E finds the bud of a small plant). EVA collects her sample and promptly signals the mother ship, and WALL-E, smitten, of course follows her… halfway across the galaxy.

Toy Story may have exhorted us “to infinity, and beyond” but WALL-E actually goes there: it’s actually a lavish space cruise ship, populated by the descendants of the people who fled the Earth when it became too garbage filled and life threatening. Fat, lazy, and bored, the people float around on sedan chairs with computer screens, barely aware of any of their surroundings. And their lives, too, will be up-ended by the arrival of EVA and the plant.

Like previous Pixar films, WALL-E succeeds surprisingly well at telling a story whose archetypes are entirely familiar and known. You know where this is all going (hint: back to Earth), but it’s the getting there that the film makes so charming. Man vs. Machine, Machine vs. Machine… the conflicts here are as old as the hills (or at least as old as 2001: A Space Odyssey), yet there’s nothing tired about the way WALL-E goes through the paces. Content to gnaw on the hand that feeds it (as opposed to outright biting), WALL-E gently pokes fun at our Wal-Mart culture, our lives in front of the glowing screens… but the points it makes about waste, and laziness and our need to get up and get going… are really very muted. While many are bound to see a “strong, bracing” social message here, I think that’s a bit much - WALL-E has no answers for our consumerist ways, and seems content to leave its most bracing message at “stop and smell the flowers” or at least “dive into the pool.”

(I’ll even leave aside the practical questions raised by the cruise ship, such as how these lazy people reproduce - which is clearly not about sex - or what happens to the dead; the cruise ship seems to have two sets of people: small children, and middle aged adults. It’s like some sort of weird Logan’s Run.)

Don’t get me wrong: I too was blown away by the level of animation, and the brilliant storytelling; I can’t imagine almost anyone failing to be moved by WALL-E and EVA’s courtship. As others say, the most charming love story of the year up to now is probably these two robots. And the visual elements, notably the sunburnt, faded colors of an abandoned Earth are surely some new feat of realism in computer graphic animation (the kind that wins Oscars). I just don’t want to oversell it, because it’s easier to make more of WALL-E than it is… and it’s the gentle, smaller elements that, to me, really make it shine. I’d hate to have people go in expecting too much, and then - like the lazy giants on the cruise Spaceship - not appreciating the gifts of wonder and discovery. That’s what WALL-E (and WALL-E) has. We should all be so lucky.