WALL-E (Pixar/Disney)
By Raymond Mai
I'll honestly say that I walked into WALL-E (opened June 27 throughout San Diego) not knowing what to expect. I looked at the trailer and I read a little about the movie, but not even that provided much information. So I sat in my seat at the preview only knowing that this movie was really hyped up. But after 103 minutes, I applauded along with the rest of the audience.
Pixar's WALL-E starts off in a New York-like city on a deserted earth. You figure out soon enough that a company called Buy 'n Large has developed WALL-E machines to clean up the earth while all the humans have flown off in a giant spaceship called the Axiom to escape the mess. Sadly, you'll also figure out that there is only one functional WALL-E (voiced by Ben Burtt) and he goes through a daily routine of collecting unique items and stacking cubes of trash until they become, well, a skyscraper. One day, a spaceship enters the trash filled atmosphere of earth and lands not far from the city. A robot comes out of the machine by the name of EVE (Elissa Knight), though Wall-E pronounces it EVA. A series of events happen and EVE fires her cannon at WALL-E while he tries to get closer to her. This stubborn robot never gives up and eventually he makes friends with EVE. This leads to WALL-E showing her a plant he has found. Because it's her directive to find plant life, she stores the plant and then shuts down. WALL-E goes out of his way to protect EVE yet she doesn't come out of this state. Soon the same spaceship from earlier comes to pick her up and WALL-E grabs hold of the spaceship and follows her back to the Axiom. There, you find out what has happened to the people of earth 700 years later and how their body mass has increased dramatically. The captain (Jeff Garlin) is soon faced with the decision to stay with the original plan of coming back to earth or follow the override orders and stay on the spaceship. He is soon attacked by AUTO (A Mac Speech Recognition Voice) and it's up to WALL-E, EVE, the captain, and the people of earth to get back to earth.
While WALL-E was on earth, I literally whispered to my brother, "The graphics are pretty nice." Though it kind of let up when you are in the spaceship sequence, the animation was done well. As you might have realized from my past reviews, I'm a sucker for character development. I like to see the personalities of all the characters develop. This movie does exactly that and I even fell for how WALL-E was so innocent and lovestruck yet he gets himself caught up in an adventure. The love story was a great addition to the movie. It stuck in my mind -- I wondered if WALL-E would ever get EVE as they tried to save the people of earth. I also liked seeing EVE express no interest in WALL-E, but as he goes out of his way to be with EVE she starts to fall for him as well. I also had a lot of good laughs in the movie. To top it off, this movie had a good message to send to the people of earth. Basically, it says, "If you keep up screwing with the earth by dumping trash everywhere, the earth will turn on you and become uninhabitable." Along with that, "you will live on a spaceship for the rest of your life, gain 300 pounds, and your bones will start to shrink." I have no problem with this movie though some people might not like the fact that there is not much dialogue. Out of all the movies I've seen this year, WALL-E (rated G for all audiences) is definitely my favorite one. This very entertaining movie deserves a 5 out of 5 stars from me.
Raymond Mai is a soon to be sophomore at Mount Miguel High School where he's on the football and baseball team. When he is not studying or playing a sport, he loves to have fun, whether it's watching movies or just kicking it behind the TV with his Nintendo Wii. He enjoys the opportunity to voice his opinions about movies.
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