Wall-E Review

Overall 4.01 of 5 view all 107 reviews

bkovacs
Annandale, VA

Cute but had me yawning

looking for something different, into movies that tell a great story, a Netflix subscriber

Pros

beautiful animation, science fiction for kids

Cons

No complexity to the plot, slow in the beginning, look at me - I'm an animator

FEB

2009

Wall-E —

I'd been looking forward to seeing Wall-E, the latest animated film from the Pixar/Disney people. Surprisingly, I had a hard time staying awake for it. It'll probably keep the kids enthralled but it did less for me than I expected.

The story is relevant. Wall-E is a robot designed to scoop up trash and stack it in tall piles. He toils on a desolate and deserted Earth, with only a cockroach for a friend. Somewhere along the way, Wall-E acquired the ability to think and appreciate things, and he saves little objects that look interesting to him. One day, he's joined by a sleek egg-shaped robot with fabulous powers, and he's fascinated by both the shape and power of the new robot.

Wall-E falls in love with the new robot, whose name is EVE. (Yeah, I thought it was just a little too obvious, too.) Wall-E follows EVE back to a spaceship where all the people are, then gets mixed up in a plot to return a growing plant to its proper location. Will Wall-E and EVE succeed? Will they stay together? What will happen to Earth?

All these are eventually answered, if a little more heavily handed than I would have liked. The animation is beautiful and I thought that a few scenes were dragged out just to show how beautifully the Pixar people can do animation. (The cigarette lighter scene, for example. If it got cut from Wall-E, would any viewer have missed it?) I like science and enjoy science fiction, so it would seem that I should like Wall-E a lot, but somehow the film didn't move me. I actually got more enjoyment from a short included on the DVD that was a comedy bit about a magician and a hungry rabbit.

As far as Wall-E was concerned, I did appreciate the idea of a consumer society polluting the Earth, promoted by a big-box store chain called Buy-N-Large. (Did anyone say "Walmart"??) But Wall-E made far too much of the relationship between Wall-E and EVE and far too little about Buy-N-Large. Maybe that's what was missing for me.

The animation in Wall-E was beautiful and kids will probably love the film. However, I found the plot thin and heavy-handed. I give Wall-E a mild recommendation for its science-fiction plot and excellent animation. I don't think Wall-E will stand up to repeated viewings as well as some other animated films.

Last edited on Apr 29, 2009

Wall-E is recommended by bkovacs

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Comments about bkovacs’s Review

In response to lonelycheese15's comment from Feb 23, 2009 at 6:45PM:

And I thank you very much for stopping by and leaving a kind comment!

--Bob

My favorite part of the movie was also the short film. In fact, I had completely forgotten that it was not the full-length film I had intended to see. I agree that it was a rather boring film, however cute.

Thanks for this! It was a great review!

In response to bkovacs's comment from Feb 22, 2009 at 8:38PM:

Thanks for the added info. I enjoy some of the cool animation they can do now, but my kids and I actually like a lot of the older films better. I think they used some type of modeling clay to do Rudolph--my kids really loved that even if it didn't have loads of special effects. I tended to like the older Willy Wonka movie better than the new one with all the special effects--most of the characters in the older one seemed more endearing and the chocolate factory in the older one seemed much prettier.

In response to Katrena's comment from Feb 21, 2009 at 6:57PM:

There wasn't any smoking of tobacco in "Wall-E" but there was a scene where Wall-E demonstrates a Bic lighter. It was completely unnecessary for the plot but it was beautiful animation. In fact, I found it somewhat distracting, because the scene clearly lingered over the Bic lighter. It convinced me that the lighter would pop up somewhere else in the movie at a critical point and I kept waiting for that to happen. But other than a lighter, there was no reference to smoking anything in the film.

Thanks for stopping by!

--Bob

In response to CyndiA's comment from Feb 21, 2009 at 7:05PM:

Yeah, well being lonely is not all it's cracked up to be. Maybe she'll find what she's looking for, but it won't be me.

Thanks for stopping by!

--Bob

What the heck is that comment from Josephine250? She must have this mixed up with match.com.

Great info in the review. I heard that Disney cut out all references to smoking in all of their films, but I'm not really up on all the latest information about that. It's interesting to see some of the older books and videos where some interesting characters smoke, like Curious George and Santa Claus!

In response to josephine250's comment from Feb 11, 2009 at 8:29PM:

I'm thankful that you stopped by my review and left a comment, but I'm married. If you like my review, I'd appreciate it if you stopped back and leave a "Helpful" vote. That's assuming you found it helpful, of course.

Good luck!

--Bob

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