First image: the Earth as a garbage dump, a future reduced to ruins. For the past 700 years, what's left of humanity has been cruising the skies in a spaceship. Only a tiny robot, WALL-E (for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth class), scoots around on urban terra firma compacting trash into piles that grow into skyscrapers.
First sound: a voice lifted in song: "Out there/there's a world outside of Yonkers." The tune is "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," a merry ditty from the forgotten 1969 movie version of Hello, Dolly with Barbra Streisand. WALL-E, his eyes like binoculars (hell, they are binoculars!), watches an old, muddy video tape of Dolly with the same yearning we see in Michael Crawford, who plays a young store clerk at the turn of the 20th-century, warbling about finding adventure in a world out of reach, a world full of shine and full of sparkle: "Girls in white in a perfumed night/Where the lights are bright as the stars!"
First reaction: WALL-E, directed with a poet's eye by Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) from a whipsmart and shrewdly accessible script he wrote with Jim Reardon, is some kind of miracle, Talk about daring. It's Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot mixed with Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Terry Gilliam's Brazil, topped with the cherry of George Lucas' Star Wars and Steven Spielberg's E.T. , and wrapped up in a G-rated whipped- cream package. What could have been a mess of influences is instead unique and unforgettable. Tons of movies promise something for everyone WALL-E actually makes good on that promise. It's a landmark in modern moviemaking that lifts you up on waves of humor, heartbreak and ravishing romance. Want proof that animation can be an art form? It's all there in the groundbreaking WALL-E.
The first, virtually dialogue-free half hour is jaw-dropping perfection, as WALL-E (his eloquent beeps come courtesy of Ben Burtt, whose sound design for the film deserves an Oscar just for starters) watches a space probe land and discharge a sleek, robot named EVE (for Extra-Terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). EVE (voiced by Elissa Knight) looks like an egg-shaped i-Pod with the power to vaporize any potential threat, a scary prospect. But it only takes a moment for WALL-E to fall hard for this cutie, who lets down her guard when he shares his treasures, including an eggbeater, a Rubik's cube, a Zippo lighter, a brassiere (don't ask), and bubble wrap that provides hours of popping fun. But it's a fragile sprout of plant, which WALL-E keeps in old shoe, that gets EVE jazzed. Before she heads off for the Axiom space station, with WALL-E in hot pursuit, the two strike up an odd-couple relationship that evokes, according to your generational reference points, Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp and Virginia Cherrill's blind flower girl in City Lights, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, Leo and Kate in Titanic, and – for the kiddies – the green ogre and the Princess in Shrek. There's been much talk about how WALL-E will fly over the heads of the little ones. No doubt some of it will. But the film's essential sweetness transcends age and cultural barriers. To see WALL-E and EVE dance and later kiss is the essence of movie magic. You won't find a funnier, more touching love story anywhere these days.
I could go on about the rest of the movie, which is more traditional than what precedes it, but never fuddy-duddy and always filled visual wonders that take the breath away. Those viewers with a fear and loathing of "message" may flinch at the script's warning about fat, consumerist humans and the ignorance that landed the planet in such disarray. But it's thrilling to watch Stanton and his genius crew of Pixar artists discover new levels of creativity. No movie can be a downer that fills you with pure exhilaration. You leave WALL-E with a feeling of the rarest kind: that you've just enjoyed a close encounter with an enduring classic.
Movie Review Taken From:http://www.rollingstone.com/
Movie Trailer
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