Wall-E!

The one word review for Zachary:

Superb.

The extended review for everyone else:

Pixar continues its unbelievable winning-streak with "Wall-E," a film that is the studio's most daring, audacious project yet and one of the most flat-out entertaining films I have seen in quite some time.

The plot is simple: Wall-E, or, the last remaining Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-Class on Earth, bides his time by compressing garbage into neat cubes and collecting the more valuable trinkets he comes across in a little museum he maintains outside of the city. This process is thrown out-of-whack by Eve, a sentry-robot sent to Earth to study its filthy environment and see if the planet is fertile to support life. I won't spoil any of the following plot points for those who have yet to see the film (and to those people: shame on you!).

The most remarkable aspect of "Wall-E," among the many remarkable aspects there are, is the almost-complete absence of dialogue from the film. The Wall-E character has no dialogue, as does Eve. All Pixar uses to advance the characters and plot is sound effects, actions, and subtle facial expressions from the robots. In fact, excluding the insertion of human characters 2/3 the way into the film, that's all there is. Beeps, groans, and physical comedy, yet that's the genius of Pixar--we can still feel for these rusty old machines like human characters, even if they haven't spoken a single word of English!

The animation, as expected, is flawless, but not perfect. Like the grimy, fuzzy visuals that "Finding Nemo" utilized for its water environments, "Wall-E" displays a dusty, garbage-infested earth, one piled sky high with trash and prone to violent sand storms. And the Wall-E character itself shows the same kind of detail, and the aged, slightly rusted exterior of his metal is juxtaposed by the shiny, sleek visual of the Eve design (for an example, just gaze at the picture I included at the top of this review, how Wall-E's fingers show such a subtle hint of dust and age, and how the edges of his body-frame show the beginning stages of rust).

One final note on the animation: Pixar continues to have the most sophisticated lighting seen in animated films today. The same gorgeous characteristics that struck me in "Rat." continue in "Wall-E," specifically in the scenes involving the museum of trash Wall-E lives in, where the source of lighting comes from strewn Christmas lights. The shot of the museum as the lights flicker on is among the prettiest images I've seen in a movie this year.

Just as Pixar is a studio of artists, it is also a haven of historians, like a Smithsonian of film history. Each Pixar film draws upon a wide range of films for inspiration, and "Wall-E" is no exception, using as its muse classic silent films from the golden era of Hollywood; as in, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and even Jacques Tati. Basically, the Wall-E character IS Chaplin's Tramp. Dirty, mangy, yet with a heart like gold and an unquenchable spirit that holds universal appeal. Also, it is no coincidence that Wall-E, like the tramp, never speaks.

Pixar's Chaplin-influence also extends to the film making. Never one to overwhelm his audience with technological gimmickry, Chaplin shot his films in two styles--far away for comedy, and close up for tragedy. Far away angles would perfectly capture the tramp's zany, unpredictable physical comedy, and close up would record every nuance and emotion of the film's conclusion. "Wall-E" follows this like an honors student, watching Wall-E's escapades with careful, far away detachment and letting the chaos develop into sublime comedy, while allowing the intimate scenes between Wall-E and Eve mature in close, compassionate quarters. Brilliance, I tell ya!

(Spoiler Alert! The following segment refers to plot developments discovered later in the film, so if you haven't seen it, close yer bloody browser!)

There is a specific reason that I love Pixar films to such a degree, and for Zach's honor, I have one word that describes it perfectly: complexity. Yes, complexity. Pixar films offer me an astonishingly large assortment of angles to analyze, from the animation, to the references, to the perfectly executed plot, to the perfectly developed characters. Yet below even all these levels is the true rhetoric of the picture, the underlying themes that Pixar subtly states. With "Wall-E," they take on consumerism.

In the film, Wall-E encounters a space-age Royal Caribbean cruise, a getaway for humans that has become permanent due to the overwhelming filth on earth. Yet on these cruises, humans have finally succumbed to machines, allowing them to do EVERYTHING. Mature adults sit on lounge chairs like large babies, with fat bulging out of every part of their body, with their appendages nothing more than inoperable blogs of mass, their fingers fat little sausages, and their necks turducken size platters. In the universe of "Wall-E," we've become our own worst nightmare--fat, lazy, and complacent. We have no ambition, no drive, and we are content with it...as long as the robots keep doing their jobs. And, we left earth because of a preponderance of trash, meaning we didn't care to change our ways and stop the accumulation!

In addition to this uncomfortable bulls-eye, the entire space colony in which these cruises preside is run by autopilots under the control of the "Buy 'n Large" mega corporation, a store whose overwhelming influence has given them control of the government. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Buy 'n Large is Walmart, and their takeover of the government is the kind of Corporate Fascism that liberal "loonies" like myself have been rallying against ever since the Reagan administration.

Now, this is painfully relevant satire, and it is important that these points be made; yet, "Wall-E" still works without this kind of examination. If you enter the film simply wanting to experience a flawlessly made animated film with big laughs, big heart, and memorable characters, "Wall-E" will suffice on an unlimited supply of levels. And that is Pixar's genius--films that offer something for everyone of every walk of life.