There comes a time when you think the same ideas are going to be rehashed for every animated Disney film, and then there are times you get surprised. Disney/Pixar is now the staple of big budget animation and you would think they'd be on the same tired animated formula. However, it's pleasing to discover that in Wall-E they not only avoid the same predictable traps, they took some risks and succeeded wildly.There's a lot of borrowed ideas in the telling of an old junk-collecting robot. In a future apocalyptic earth, Wall-E is the only remaining inhabitant who collects and stacks garbage. His regular routine is turned upside down when he actually discovers a plant, and a futuristic probe robot comes to discover it. At this point that is all I am going to describe. Anything more would just spoil your fun.
Nevertheless, what does unfold is a film that pays homage to a lot of borrowed ideas, and takes chances on poking criticism of ourselves as humans in the most indirect way. Wall-E's eyes and movements are very similar to the robot in the film Short Circuit that had just as much emotional appeal to it's audience. Better still a chief villain in the film (a captain's steering wheel), harks back to the evil Hall 9000 computer of Kubrick's space odyssey 2001. But the film Wall-E goes one step further.
Perhaps the films greatest triumph, is how it can make the most critical aspects of humanity by poking fun at big corporate consumerism run amok (Big and Large), the need to save the environment, and the waste of human slothery. All these are made in a way that is not only believable but non-offensive and educational to boot. They even make a cockroach the most cuddly thing you can even imagine.
The creators not only made a great film but took big risks that paid off, there isn't even any dialogue in this film for almost an entire hour. With all of that, Wall-E in itself is a work of great genius.
