Wall-E

By the time I got around to seeing Wall-E (only five days after its release) all the small children I know had already seen it, so I couldn’t use them as an excuse for going to an animated kid’s movie. Not that it mattered. The majority of people in the audience were over 18. Wall-E is about a time in the future where the earth has become so overrun by un-recycled waste and pollution that it can no longer support life, causing all humans to evacuate earth while a group of Wall-E robots would clean up the toxic waste. 700 years later, the humans are still living aboard their cruise ship in space, however on earth only one Wall-E robot remains.

Wall-E continues cleaning up the planet, but during the past seven centuries he has developed a personality and human-like emotions, including loneliness. Then he meets Eve, another robot sent to earth in an attempt to find plant life on Earth. Wall-E falls in love with Eve and does everything he can to protect her from the harsh conditions on earth. When a ship comes to collect Eve from earth, Wall-E’s love for her is put to the test and we see him go to the ends of the earth (and the universe) to protect Eve and recreate the love he had seen in old movies.

Aside from the love story between the two robots, and the antics they get up to on Earth and in Space, there is another story in the background. This is the story of the humans and the pollution that has made life on earth impossible. In the time this story takes place, humans have lost all dependence. They have become obese, are transported around the spacecraft in automated chairs, have face-to-face conversations with others via a screen, have their meals in liquid form and are extremely unaware of their surroundings. I’m pretty sure this was Disney Pixar’s way of saying ‘humans are pretty lazy and if we don’t get any better at looking after the Earth this is what is going to happen to us’.

The story had some tense moments which caused me to bite my nails, had some teary moments, and some very sweet moments. I did notice the second half of the film was pretty much overrun with the ‘Go Green’ message, but there isn’t any harm in that, so why not eh!

I really enjoyed this movie, not just because of the awesome animations but also the way the story progressed. Not only was it a love story between two robots and the extremes one of those robots would do to protect the one he loves, but it is also a story with an important message in it. Go and see it, it’s totally worth a look. It’s definitely a heartfelt movie, not one of those recent Disney movies that don’t have much of a moral to it, but almost like one of the original ones where you can leave feeling good about life. And you may also leave having a slight crush on a certain little robot. All good.