Wall-E (2008)

VERDICT:
9/10 Android Valentines

I was usually not the type to go see this kind of movie without having someone pay for me to see it. Stupid, I know, but I’ve changed for the better. But thanks to a boring Sunday afternoon and there being nothing better out in theaters at the time, I dragged my good buddy Fred along for the ride and figured “Toy Story‘s good shit, so why not see Wall-E?”

I’m glad I made the call because Wall-E was easily one of the best movies to come out in 2008.

Wall-E takes place centuries into the future where a lone compactor robot named Wall-E is left to clean up a garbage-ridden Earth that has been abandoned by a race of fat bastard humans who now live in an enormous space station so they can avoid responsibility for jacking up their planet.

Yes, it has green overtones to it, but whatever, we are jacking up the planet. Even so, this isn’t An Inconvenient Truth: The Animated Version. It’s not preachy by any means, so don’t hold that as a reason to avoid this movie.

Anyway, one thing leads to another and Wall-E goes on an adventure in space when he falls in binary love with a souped-up future robot named Eva. Typically, the idea of a storyline that’s more or less driven by robo-romance doesn”t really appeal to me, but I’d be doing you the reader a disservice if I didn’t admit to getting choked up by this movie. It’s not cool to tear up in front of my buddy Fred, but I couldn’t help it. It isn’t long before you forget about the characters’ metal shells and start connecting with them on a very human level.

The main complaint I hear from people who didn’t like this movie is that there’s hardly any dialogue. And there’s not, but that’s the beauty of it. Good storytelling is about showing emotion, not telling it. Anyone can just say outright that “I’m mad at you!” or “I love you!”, but expressing those emotions through a character’s actions instead is a talent that speaks far louder, and that’s what Wall-E does best. The lack of dialogue in Wall-E doesn’t detract from the experience whatsoever; all I know is that this movie would have been a lot worse if Wall-E was spouting off lines like C-3PO.

I could go on, but Wall-E is just one of those movies that you’ll enjoy no matter who you are. I’d be shocked if anyone told me otherwise. It’s visually breathtaking, it’s entirely entertaining, and it’s got everything that makes Pixar movies great time after time.

So give it a whirl. Just because it’s animated doesn’t mean it’s a kid’s movie.