Wow-E

I finally got around to watching WALL-E on DVD. I had to see for myself why WALL-E had won critics' hearts all over the world and why this was yet another of Pixar's Oscar-winning animated feat.

There's little or no dialogue in the first half of the film (only robotic chatters). The lead character's WALL-E, , a tale about a waste-allocating robot operating on the desolated, garbage-riddened wasteland that was once Earth. The adoration factor's all over WALL-E, which spots a pair of binocular eyes that brings out subtly an ever-curious glance, reminiscing much seen in that of an anime character. As the film progresses WALL-E has a crush on a fancier, more advanced robot called EVE and follows her all the way onto a spaceship, where more adventures await him.

WALL-E features superb sound design and background music, along with an astounding cinematography which wonderfully captures the grittiness of wasteland on Earth and the majestic glitter of the stars and galaxy beyond. WALL-E blends realistic 3D imagery and live-action seamlessly yet simultaneously delineating between the "now" and the "past", where the past is presented through old footage of classic movies, and the now being WALL-E's world. The quirky 2D-animated credits-sequence is fitting and rounds off and juxtaposes against the rest of the film. The movie also seems to be heavy-handed on environmental issues (given the presentation of a bleak future of Earth, which recalls films like Idiocracy) & also issues about the future & futility of the human race i.e. The Matrix.

What past films have tried to grapple with (think Bicentennial Man, Terminator 2, or I, Robot) might have been filling robots with emotions. WALL-E succeeds in the fact that it remains a cartoon rooted in an imaginative landscape, which transcends the suspension of disbelief and makes you look past the robots in the film as sentient beings and more as mere cartoon characters with heart, where even robots can fall in love. I don't know what got into me, but the film, jam-packed with exhilarating adventurous-sequences and a heart-breaking scene towards the end, brought tears to my eyes. WALL-E is not only a fun adventure film, but a moving one too. It is certainly one of the best films of 2008, and one which brings both tears and smile to my face.