WALL-E [2008] review

I have said that CG animation will never be able to portray the emotion and real-ness and poetry that Miyazaki’s traditional 2D animation does.  I am already wrong.  WALL-E is a masterpiece of filmmaking, animation, poetry and beauty on screen.  I had to wait months to see WALL-E as Tokyo only got it this very day.  It was really hard to wait.  I am so glad I did though because seeing it projected beautifully on the largest screen in Tokyo was a theater going experience I will always remember and rank with the best of them.  

I had heard that the movie opens with basically 40-minutes of no dialogue, just Wall-E, and I was stoked about this.  This mostly language free segment showed how Wall-E went about his day, and showed how large his heart was and what a feeling and sensitive, if clumsy, creature he was.  

Before I expected comes the arrival of EVE, a far more advanced robot sent on a scouting mission.  It’s love at first sight for Wall-E.  Watching the relationship develop between Wall-E and Eve is done better than any recent live action film I can recall.

The social message in this film is very important as well, and I have no idea how obese Americans watching this movie in the theater couldn’t leave the theater stunned and shocked into immediately making pledges to shed their fat en masse.  The future the movie predicts is so, so possible and seemingly already happening.  I see the sloth all around me.

The scene that pushes Wall-E into the realm of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli is one of Wall-E and EVE flying together.  I was in awe watching the effortless beauty of it.  It was pure poetry and harmony.  I look forward to watching that scene again, on blu-ray, once I move back to the U.S.  

I cannot pick between this movie and THE DARK KNIGHT for best movie of 2008, and am glad I don’t have to.  I loved them both.

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