Movie Review: WALL·E (2008)


Movie: WALL·E (2008)

“In a distant, but not so unrealistic future, where mankind has abandoned earth because it has become covered with trash from products sold by the powerful multi-national Buy N Large corporation, WALL-E, a garbage collecting robot has been left to clean up the mess. Mesmerized with trinkets of Earth’s history and show tunes, WALL-E is alone on Earth except for a sprightly pet cockroach. One day, Eve, a sleek (and dangerous) reconnaissance robot, is sent to Earth to find proof that life is once again sustainable. WALL-E falls in love with Eve. WALL-E rescues Eve from a dust storm and shows her a living plant he found amongst the rubble. Consistent with her “directive” Eve takes the plant and automatically enters a deactivated state except for a blinking green beacon. WALL-E, doesn’t understand what has happened to his new friend, but true to his love, he protects her from wind, rain, and lightning, even as she is unresponsive. One day a massive ship comes to reclaim Eve, but WALL-E, out of love or loneliness hitches a ride on the outside of the ship to rescue Eve. The ship arrives back at a large space cruise ship, which is carrying all of the humans who evacuated Earth 700 years earlier. The people of Earth ride around this space resort on hovering chairs which give them a constant feed of TV and video chatting. They drink all of their meals through a straw out of laziness and/or bone loss, and are all so fat that they can barely move. When the auto-pilot computer, acting on hastily given instructions sent many centuries before, tries to prevent the people of Earth from returning, by stealing the plant, WALL-E, Eve, the portly captain, and a band of broken robots stage a mutiny. Written by Anonymous”

  • Director: Andrew Stanton
  • Release Date:
    27 June 2008 (USA)
  • Run Time:
    98 min
  • Country: USA
  • Genre: Animation , Adventure , Family , Romance , Sci-Fi

Tagline: An Adventure Beyond the Ordinar-E

Trivia: Director Andrew Stanton explained why he used excerpts from Hello, Dolly! (1969) in an interview: “When I got to ‘Hello, Dolly!’ and I played ‘Put on Your Sunday Clothes’, and that first phrase ‘Out there…’ came out, it just fit musically… I finally realized, ‘You know what, this song is about two guys that are just so naive, they’ve never left a small town, and they just wanna go out in the big city for one night and kiss a girl. That’s my main character.’ And then my co-writer, Jim Reardon, said, ‘You know what, he could actually discover an old tape in the trash, and that’s how he got inspired by it, and it’s a great way to show that he’s got a romantic slant.’ So we started looking at the movie, and when I found the other song, ‘It Only Takes a Moment’, and saw the two lovers holding hands, I realized, ‘That’s a perfect way for my main character to express the phrase ‘I love you’ without being able to say it.’”

Goofs: Incorrectly regarded as goofs: WALL-E did not find his plant inside a closed refrigerator through which sunlight could not penetrate. Although it was behind a refrigerator door, the door had been removed from its hinges and was propped up against the corner of the fridge. WALL-E cut the door with his laser simply because it was too big for him to move as one piece.