WALL-E (2008)

Next up in Pixar week is another movie listed amongst their best, WALL-E.

The Movie:

WALL-E is the 9th film in the Pixar library and the middle of their three "prestige" films.  The movie was well-received, landing on many film-of-the-year lists.  Time Magazine would eventually name it the best film of the decade.  WALL-E did win the Oscar for Best Animated Film, but many observers felt it was robbed of a Best Picture nomination.  (The omission of this movie and The Dark Knight was one of the driving forces behind the expanded Best Picture slate beginning the following year.)

Set 800 years in the future, the title robot WALL-E is the last functioning unit of a fleet of trash compacting robots left behind to clean up Earth after it was abandoned by humans.  WALL-E has gained sentience, and has begun collecting a variety of items, including a small plant.  EVE, a probe droid sent out by the ship Axiom to find life, discovers WALL-E's plant, and her protocol to deliver the plant to the Axiom is activated.  Thinking she is in danger, WALL-E follows EVE into space and onto the Axiom, where not everything is as it seems.

I still remember when I saw this movie in the theaters back in 2008 and walking out stunned by how amazing this movie is and how powerful its story is.  This was the first Pixar film I had seen in the theaters in seven years at that point, and it definitely helped me to realize how far Pixar had come.

Sad to say, as good as the movie is, it's not one that I have rewatched much since then.  And in viewing this evening, that's a shame, because I remembered why I thought then that it was such a good movie.  The first part of this movie is stunning.  Give credit to the writers and animators for making a movie where the main character has practically no dialogue and the first third of the story is mostly just him.  If anything, and this was probably my one critique the first time I saw the movie, the third act gets slightly more formulaic and thus has a hard time continuing the wonderful tone of the first act, but for some reason that didn't bother me nearly as much now ten years later.

The score by Thomas Newman is nice, and the song "Down to Earth" written by him and Peter Gabriel and performed by Gabriel that plays over the closing credits does a nice job wrapping up the film.  However, the music that stands out the most is the continued use of songs from Hello, Dolly!, in particular the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," which WALL-E repeatedly plays on both audio and video recording.

(On a personal note, that sequence means a bit more to me having now both seen the movie and having played Cornelius Hackl in a stage production of The Matchmaker, the play Hello, Dolly! is based on.  Cornelius says the actual line in the play "put on your Sunday clothes.")

Presence in the Parks:

For as well-received and highly-regarded as WALL-E is, it really doesn't have much presence in the parks.  Scenes from the movie do show up in some of the nighttime projection shows, including World of Color at DCA and the new Happily Ever After at Magic Kingdom.