JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

I haven’t seen The X-Files 2 yet. The Alamat Twins bailed on me, citing deadlines at work. You…you…yuppies. Expect a visit from Flukeman any moment.

So I went to see Wall-E instead, and it’s lovely. The Pixar movies work because despite being impressive technological achievements,  they’re never just about the technology; they’re all about The Story.

Wall-E takes place 700 years in the future. The human race has literally trashed the earth and abandoned it. People live on huge starships where everything is done for them by robots. Cut off from their home, they pass the time consuming empty entertainment; they’ve forgotten what it is to be human. Meanwhile, back on the abandoned planet, all the robots left behind to clean up the mountains of garbage have broken down. The only one left is Wall-E, a plucky little machine which repairs itself using salvaged junk. It leads a melancholy existence, watching a videotape of Hello, Dolly! over and over again; its only companion is a cockroach. Then a spacecraft lands and dispatches probes in search of signs of sustainable life. . .

There’s minimal dialogue in Wall-E; the story is told with music and the moving image. Call it pure cinema, a descendant of Fantasia and 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are numerous references to the Kubrick, including machines “dancing” to a Strauss waltz and the “apes” learning to walk upright. Wall-E asks important questions about the future of our species without ever sounding like an essay. It’s a message movie by people who really know how to make a movie. Andrew Stanton directs. The excellent musical score is by Thomas Newman; Peter Gabriel collaborates on the theme song.