As I went to see WALL-E (from now on Wall-E, as Nature abhors a shout, even though it’s supposed to be an acronym) last a couple of days ago, I was feeling highly ambiguous and thus also a bit scared. You see, my hopes for this movie were nothing short of astronomic, as just about everything I’d read about and seen of it seemed to scream “AWESOME!” Naturally, this made me concerned, as at one point, I believe my expectations were so high few things short of Donnie Darko or Le Pacte des Loups or freakin’ Das Leben der Anderen or Gosford Park could have lived up to them. Luckily, though, I was able to restrain myself, by remembering (feverishly, but still) that Wall-E was essentially a kids’ movie. But by now I am sure you are all mentally screaming, “Enough of this egocentric quasi-meta-stuff! What about the movie?!”, so I’ll indulge you.

When the humans had finally managed to cover Earth in the waste of their manic consumption they took off on a luxury cruise, leaving a few thousand (probably significantly more) robots to clean up their mess. Only (heh, I do love me my understatements) problem was, the cruise was meant to be over in five years, at which point the robots’ job would be done, and the humans could return. This estimation was a bit on the optimistic side, as Wall-E has been toiling for 700 years.

Now, all his colleagues are defunct, and he, as mentioned above, has developed a personality.((Not really an all too unrealistic premise, I think, as I remember a clip from Discovery Channel about ten years ago, where this computer guy was talking about how he had connected a lot of computer chips in a network, and observed that, as data was passed around, while some chips (or circuits; don’t forget I’m a historian here, people!) burned out, others survived and became more efficient.)) He collects all manner of useless (though oddly well-preserved) garbage, repairs himself from parts scavenged from his incapacitated kin, and has the weirdest obsession with a Hello Dolly movie from the 1960s that he got off an old video iPod.

While frighteningly endearing, this is of course not really a basis for a non-avantgarde movie, so his daily routines are utterly ruined when a drone ship sent out from the mothership of the humans arrives. From this drone the robot EVE disembarks on a search for plant life (which, coincidentally, Wall-E has just discovered and is hiding in his hull), and Wall-E falls desperately in love. From here on out, Wall-E’s existence is connected to that of the human race, as he follows EVE when she returns to the ship of the humans.

Wall-E might just be one of the best movies Pixar has made. An atmosphere of bittersweet tragicomedy permeates the whole movie, as the almost sickeningly cute Wall-E is shown going through his pre-programmed but ultimately pointless routines during his days, and then going home to his storage container where he sorts through the interesting garbage he has found during the day, watches a scene or two from Hello Dolly and mimes a bit to a dance-routine, before shutting himself off for the night. This opening part of the movie is so wistful it continually kept me on the brink of crying, while it at the same time depicted the ultimate consequence of our current lifestyle in the Western world — which is what the movie is basically about.

Because fundamentally this is a moralising environmentalist movie, no doubt about it. From the opening scene, with its tour through a metropolis where the piles of compressed garbage tower over skyscrapers, to the end credits (I strongly advise you to remain seated through them, by the way; they’re awfully sweet), the essential message is that we’re on the wrong track, and that while it might not end up precisely as this, it will not go well for us if we don’t change our ways. In other words, it is not much different from the fire-and-brimstone preacher’s “Repent, sinners, or burn for all time!”

A familiar structure for those of us well-versed in the world of science fiction, then, and not really a very original one; this particular kind has been around at least since the 1970s. What makes Wall-E stand out, though, is obviously its form, format and distribution. Granted, as I said I reminded myself before I went to see it, the movie is a kids’ movie, so it lacks the nuances and slightly more disturbing imagery a more adult-oriented movie might have had. However, the lack of nuance is only apparent; if judged by the parameters of your run of the mill children’s movies, I felt that Wall-E took kids a bit more seriously than is normal. It dealt with serious issues, presented causes, distributed blame, and even suggested solutions (very superficially, of course, but still) in manners I can’t remember having seen much before. Furthermore, the absence of more disturbing imagery, while obviously vastly expanding its potential influence, might actually have served to make it more persuasive. After all, the more dire the predictions, the easier for critics to scream about doomsday prophets and thus illegitimising it with large parts of the population.

Additionally, the format of the animated movie primarily aimed at children allows it to do things it normally wouldn’t do. For example, its argumentation is fairly blunt and could easily be labeled as “preaching”, but seeing as this is not exactly rare in movies and literature aimed at children, fewer people are going to react negatively to it. Some are perhaps going to cry out about “indoctrination of our kids” or something, but while the didactic elements are not exactly subtle, they’re not all that overt, either. I felt that this was a movie that had a lot of shining lights, slapstick and action to draw in and please the kids (and a lot of adults, too, of course), with an added dollop of moralising camouflaged as child-oriented but in reality focused on the parents.

Anyway, enough of this semi-coherent rant-passed-off-as-analysis; let’s try to sum things up. Wall-E is a fun movie, a touching movie, a potentially action-inducing movie, and (as most of Pixar’s movies) a movie that appeals to both old and young. I strongly advise you all to go and watch this splendid pearl of a movie in cinemas, as it is quite mind-blowing.

9.5/10.