Wall.E Film Review

Despite its bleakness, the opening of Wall·E is impressive. Earth is a scene of devastation with mounds of rubbish piled high, tall enough to reach the top of the tallest skyscrapers. Then we meet our hero, a little robot bravely scooping up rubbish and compacting it into small cubes. He is the only sentient life form on Earth, all humans having left to live on spacecrafts when the planet became too toxic to support human life.

The film follows the traditional Disney format of a main character with his quirky pet, but even so you cannot help but like this little hero. Even with the film’s minimal dialogue it is engrossing; however, I felt it lost itself and its main message for a while with the love interest sub-plot.

Nevertheless, by equating corporate greed with the rubbish we leave behind, the film does still try to show corporate greed for what it is worth. The focus is on one all-powerful corporation. This silent evil makes its appearance when we meet humanity for the first time, characterised as disgusting, almost slug-like creatures, controlled by this all-consuming corporation drifting through space on board a spaceship. This whole set-up regarding corporate greed is quite ironic, however, as Disney itself can be viewed as a corporate monster.

This film is trying to highlight issues about our wasteful society and give a glimpse of what could come, and at the rate we’re currently going, portrays a realistic scenario. Whether the target audience will get the message is another matter. What does sadden me about this film is the almost child-like optimism that all will be OK in the end as mankind will find the miracle to cure the problem. The reality is that this situation could be avoided if we all worked together now to solve these problems and not hide from them.

Wall·E is produced by Pixar Animation Studios, released by Walt Disney Pictures on 27 June 2008.

 By Matt