Movie Review: Wall-E

At first thought, Wall-E would seem to be just another Pixar animated movie from Disney. But with hits like Toy Story, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles and now, Wall-E, Pixar can say for a fact that it can create children's movies that successfully reach--and engage--an adult audience. Wall-E is not just a film about the life of a robot, rather, it is an important social commentary on what might happen to our planet if and when the culture of buying large and polluting without regard continues. 

Wall-E begins by showing us Earth in the 2100s, after the huge corporation Buy-N-Large took over everything on the planet, government included. What we see is a dramatically represented Earth--one completely devoid of inhabitants. Trash, as you see, is everywhere, and because of the planet being completely overrun with this waste, all humans have been forced to leave the planet and seek refuge on one of BnL's fleet of super spaceships. What would happen to Earth, however? Well, BnL has that taken care of, deploying a fleet of WALL-E (Waste Allocation Lift Loader-Earth Class) robots to clean up the planet. Seven hundred years later, our lone protagonist Wall-E is the last remaining robot that works. 

What follows is the story of a robot who has grown lonely, until he is joined by EVE, a robot sent down from one of the mega-spaceships to find living plant matter on Earth, and in turn, to find out if it is safe for humans to return. When she finds a plant that Wall-E has saved in a shoe, she takes it and stores it, and eventually goes into standby mode. A doting companion, Wall-E cares for her during this time, until a ship comes to pick her up from Earth and return her to the mega-ship. 

Wall-E is not just a fictional love story between two robots. It is, however, an important commentary on the dangers of rampant consumerism--the constant overbuying and polluting of the planet while disregarding the consequences. Is Wall-E an accurate depiction of what Earth might look like several hundred years from now? Of course we can't predict the future, but anything is possible. For many reasons, these included, Wall-E is an important film to see that will entertain at the same time as deliver an important message.