WALL-E

Pixar’s 2008 “WALL-E” is actually three things roll into one movie: an enchanting animated film, a visual amazement and a nice science-fiction story. Roger Ebert stated in his review, “After “Kung Fu Panda,” I thought I had just about exhausted my emergency supply of childlike credulity, but here is a film, like “Finding Nemo,” that you can enjoy even if you’ve grown up.” The film works hugely without dialogue, which is really amazing. Ebert admitted, “it can easily cross language barriers, which is all the better, considering that it tells a planetary story.”

The movie takes place 700 years in the future. A city filled with skyscrapers is rising from the town. Looker closer shows that the skyscrapers were made out of trash, nicely firmed into squares or packages and put on top of one another. In the entire city, only one being is there. This is WALL-E, voiced by Ben Burtt, the last working solar-powered robot. He – the story doesn’t really give the gender – picks up trash, puts it in his stomach, compresses it into a square and climbs on his tractor treads and goes up a curving road to the top of his latest skyscraper, to put it nicely on the pile.

Obviously, WALL-E is really lonely. Do you think WALL-E even knows that? He comes home at night to a storage home, where he has collected a few treasures from his findings of the garbage and decorated them with Christmas lights. He goes into his area where he’s plugged in, takes off his steps from his worn-out wheels and goes into sleep mode. The next day is a surprise: One of thousands since the last human left the Earth and went into space aboard huge spaceships that look like saps for the morbidly obese.

One day WALL-E’s day-by-day job is ruined. Something new arrives on the Earth, which otherwise has only been old things left behind. To the audience, this is a shiny spaceship. I can’t even guess what WALL-E thinks it could be. One event following another, WALL-E goes on the ship following an advanced robot named EVE, voiced by Elissa Knight, and returned to the orbiting spaceship Axiom, along with what he recently found on Earth: a tiny, perfect green plant, which he found growing in the garbage and moved into an old shoe.

Is this enough for you to want to watch the film, or do you want to hear more? Ebert mentioned, “Speaking voices are now heard for the first time in the movie, although all on his own, WALL-E has a vocabulary (or repertory?) of squeaks, rattles and electronic purrs, and a couple of pivoting eyes that make him look downright anthropomorphic.” We meet a Hoverchair family, voiced by John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy, so famous because on the ship they get around in hover chairs that fly over surfaces and whip them around effortlessly. Ebert mentioned, “They’re all as fat as Susie’s aunt.”

Ebert notes that, “This is not entirely their fault, since generations in the low-gravity world aboard the Axiom have evolved humanity into a race whose members resemble those folks you see whizzing around Wal-Mart in their electric shopping carts.”

There is now a story with WALL-E, the ship’s captain, voiced by Jeff Garlin, several residents on the Hover seats and the fate of the green plant WALL-E found. Ebert noted, “And in a development that would have made Sir Arthur Clarke’s heart beat with joy, humanity returns home once again — or is that a spoiler?”

The movie has a breathtaking look. Ebert credited, “Like so many of the Pixar animated features, it finds a color palette that’s bright and cheerful, but not too pushy, and a tiny bit realistic at the same time. The drawing style is Comic Book Cool, as perfected in the funny comics more than in the superhero books: Everything has a stylistic twist to give it flair. And a lot of thought must have gone into the design of WALL-E, for whom I felt a curious affection. Consider this hunk of tin beside the Kung Fu Panda. The panda was all but special-ordered to be lovable, but on reflection, I think he was so fat, it wasn’t funny anymore.” However, WALL-E looks rusty, hard-working and fearless, and expresses his mannerisms with body language and (mostly) with the binocular-like video cameras he has for eyes. The movie gets the tradition of going back to the beginning days of Walt Disney, who condensed human expressions to their widest workings and found ways to interpret them to animals, birds, bees, flowers, trains and everything else.

Ebert said, “What’s more, I don’t think I’ve quite captured the film’s enchanting storytelling.” Directed and co-written by Andrew Stanton, who wrote and directed “Finding Nemo,” is has ideas, not just mindless scenes involving characters practicing karate on one another into high-angle shots. It also has a little work on the part of the audience, and a little thought, and could be especially interesting to the children in the audience. This story told in a different style and with a realistic look could have been an intriguing science-fiction film. In that case, it could be.

Note: The movie is led by “Presto,” a new Pixar short about a disagreement over a carrot between a magician and his rabbit.

“WALL-E” is another one of my all-time favorite Pixar, animated and films ever. If you haven’t seen this film, you are missing out. At the time it was released, this film was close to “Finding Nemo,” but didn’t have the same thing that made “Finding Nemo” the best. I “highly” recommend this film.

Check in tomorrow for the next installment that came closer to “Finding Nemo” than “WALL-E” did, in “Disney’s Pixar Month.”