Movie Review: WALL-E

Let's be frank. WALL-E is good. It's damn good. And the more I think about the movie after having watched it, the more I like it.

I went into WALL-E concerned since this was the first Pixar film to be fully produced under the new Disney ownership. And as we all know, the modern Walt Disney Company has a magnificent way of, well, screwing good things up. Thankfully, it appears Pixar can still make a great film, because WALL-E delivers on almost every level.

WALL-E tells the story of a lonely waste disposal robot living alone on a post-apocalyptic planet Earth. Eventually, through a fortuitous turn of events he finds love, adventure, and a greater purpose in life than endlessly cleaning up the shattered remains of humanity's past.


The setting for WALL-E surprised me a little at first, since I don't think I've ever seen an animated children's movie take place in the destroyed ruins of humanity before, but the more I think of it, the more I like it. WALL-E carries some good moral messages in it, which no movies seem to do nowadays, nevertheless children's movies. (Bratz anyone?!) Instead of trying to pander to kids and sell them movie-based toys, WALL-E carries a message that the things we love and own sometimes have a price much larger than what we realize, and when all is said and done, even our most valuable possessions ultimately end up worthless in comparison to what life and the universe around us have to offer.

Visually, WALL-E looks magnificent. Pixar's mastery of the available technology gives us a film with incredible detail that never ceases to amaze. However, we've come to expect that from Pixar, so the real shining aspect of WALL-E is the storytelling. It's refreshing to see such a well written and executed story. Even more amazing is the amount of personality the animators put into WALL-E, considering he has no face, and is actually voiced by a computer generated synthesizer that doesn't even create words. Within the first half-hour of the movie, you actually feel for WALL-E and can identify with him. It's incredible.

My only gripe with WALL-E as a movie would be the lack of a truly good soundtrack. The movie sounded fine, and there was good scoring for the background, but there were no real blockbuster songs or musical numbers like we've come to expect from past Disney and Pixar films. I can't recall any of the songs now off of the top of my head, even though I just saw the movie.

Overall, WALL-E is an excellent movie that I would recommend to kids and adults alike. It's fun, it looks good, and it tells an engaging story with some meaning behind it. Go see it.

SCORING: I give WALL-E 4.5 Agent Smiths out of a possible 5.