Five Minute Review: WALL*E
Dec. 30th, 2008 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalFinally got this on disc (not the three disc special edition, alas) over Christmas. Okay, technically Thomas got it as a present, but given I've watched it three times so far compared to his 1/2 times, I think I can do a fair summary of the plot now.
Scene: We open on post-Garbage Apocalypse Earth, watching the last robot on the planet calmly stack cubes of compressed junk, just as he’s done every day for the past 700 years.
WALL*E: Doop-de-doo-de-doo…
Cockroach: Dude, you do this all day and then watch “Hello, Dolly” all night. You have got to get out of this rut.
Scene: A spaceship lands on him.
Cockroach: Well, that’s one way…
Scene: Eve, our trigger happy, i-Pod like probe, comes down and starts, um, probing.
WALL*E: Hi, I’m WALL*E. I like working in the sun and watching classic movies and I hope you’ll be my… Ah! Don’t shoot! DON’T SHOOT!
EVE: Little busy here, probing for life.
Cockroach: I’m life!
EVE: Probing for life people actually like. Incidentally, how old are you? Has WALL*E been feeding your whole family Twinkies for seven centuries or has it just been you?
Cockroach: I’m immortal basically. Kinda like those guys on Highlander.
Scene: EVE gets caught on an (inexplicably still functioning) electromagnet, * blasts the heck out of it and then sits by a romantic oil tanker bonfire with WALL*E.
WALL*E: Wanna see my bachelor pad?
EVE: No.
A violent windstorm starts up
EVE: On second thouuuuuuuuuuught!
The go back to WALL*E’s place. He shows her random junk, his whopping one tape VHS collection (meh), a lighter (coooool) and a….
EVE: DIRECTIVE! (She grabs the plant, sticks it inside her and shuts down)
WALL*E: Hello? Helllooooo? Look, if you think the date is boring you can just say
you’ve got a headache or something.
Scene: EVE stays offline for quite some time. WALL*E gets bored and goes back to work. The spaceship lands again. The cockroach takes a look at it…
WALL*E: Waddaya mean the spaceship landed again? I gotta catch up with EVE!
He zooms off and grabs hold of a rung just as the spaceship takes off. The subsequent tour of the universe is something I wish I’d seen on the big screen.
WALL*E: Coooooooool.
The ship docks with the Axiom. Eve is taken away with WALL*E following desperately.
Critic: And then the humans show up…
Reviewer: It’s still a good movie.
Critic: It was a good movie. A brilliant Chaplinesque journey around a devastated world. Then we get a standard They Got It, We Need It plotline stuck on it involving baby-fied humans and…
Reviewer: Shut up, look, just shut up! Yes, it turns into an action movie for a while. And action movie that’s got some freaking brilliant character moments between two people who share maybe a half-dozen words through the whole film. Sure the “People waking up to their own humanity” plot is as old as the hills. It’s that old because it works.
Critic: You didn’t need talking characters.
Reviewer: You need it for a movie with 90 minutes running time.
Critic: The Triplets of Belleville managed…
Reviewer: The Triplets of Belleville was a stinking pile of French cheese that wouldn’t know plot and characterization if it got bit on its derriere!
Critic: It’s French, that automatically makes it better than that Disney-fied American pap.
Reviewer: Yeah, like Disney would have ever dared even suggest the implications of the fate of toys in the Toy Story universe. Face it, Pixar can do no wrong.
Critic: A Bug’s Life.
Reviewer: It was just their second movie, and it’s still a brilliant send up of The Seven Samurai. Or maybe The Three Amigos, I’m not sure.
Critic: Cars.
Reviewer: Okay, ya got me there…
Critic: So in conclusion, WALL*E absolutely…
Reviewer: …rocked my socks off.
Critic: Well I thought that stupid little robot was a big pile of…
EVE slowly rises up from behind the chair of the Critic, her arm pointed towards his head.
Critic: Um, what does she want?
Reviewer: Word of advice, don’t tick off the heavily armed robot who blew a hole in her boyfriend’s roof because dragging him outside to be recharged just wasn’t fast enough.
The End
* Incidentally, how could that magnet and all the holographic ads still be working? Even if you assume that those windmills could still standing after seven centuries of violent windstorms, the idea that anything could be working besides WALL*E, given that all of his brothers and the obviously robustly built recycling equipment broke down is a bit off.
Scene: We open on post-Garbage Apocalypse Earth, watching the last robot on the planet calmly stack cubes of compressed junk, just as he’s done every day for the past 700 years.
WALL*E: Doop-de-doo-de-doo…
Cockroach: Dude, you do this all day and then watch “Hello, Dolly” all night. You have got to get out of this rut.
Scene: A spaceship lands on him.
Cockroach: Well, that’s one way…
Scene: Eve, our trigger happy, i-Pod like probe, comes down and starts, um, probing.
WALL*E: Hi, I’m WALL*E. I like working in the sun and watching classic movies and I hope you’ll be my… Ah! Don’t shoot! DON’T SHOOT!
EVE: Little busy here, probing for life.
Cockroach: I’m life!
EVE: Probing for life people actually like. Incidentally, how old are you? Has WALL*E been feeding your whole family Twinkies for seven centuries or has it just been you?
Cockroach: I’m immortal basically. Kinda like those guys on Highlander.
Scene: EVE gets caught on an (inexplicably still functioning) electromagnet, * blasts the heck out of it and then sits by a romantic oil tanker bonfire with WALL*E.
WALL*E: Wanna see my bachelor pad?
EVE: No.
A violent windstorm starts up
EVE: On second thouuuuuuuuuuught!
The go back to WALL*E’s place. He shows her random junk, his whopping one tape VHS collection (meh), a lighter (coooool) and a….
EVE: DIRECTIVE! (She grabs the plant, sticks it inside her and shuts down)
WALL*E: Hello? Helllooooo? Look, if you think the date is boring you can just say
you’ve got a headache or something.
Scene: EVE stays offline for quite some time. WALL*E gets bored and goes back to work. The spaceship lands again. The cockroach takes a look at it…
WALL*E: Waddaya mean the spaceship landed again? I gotta catch up with EVE!
He zooms off and grabs hold of a rung just as the spaceship takes off. The subsequent tour of the universe is something I wish I’d seen on the big screen.
WALL*E: Coooooooool.
The ship docks with the Axiom. Eve is taken away with WALL*E following desperately.
Critic: And then the humans show up…
Reviewer: It’s still a good movie.
Critic: It was a good movie. A brilliant Chaplinesque journey around a devastated world. Then we get a standard They Got It, We Need It plotline stuck on it involving baby-fied humans and…
Reviewer: Shut up, look, just shut up! Yes, it turns into an action movie for a while. And action movie that’s got some freaking brilliant character moments between two people who share maybe a half-dozen words through the whole film. Sure the “People waking up to their own humanity” plot is as old as the hills. It’s that old because it works.
Critic: You didn’t need talking characters.
Reviewer: You need it for a movie with 90 minutes running time.
Critic: The Triplets of Belleville managed…
Reviewer: The Triplets of Belleville was a stinking pile of French cheese that wouldn’t know plot and characterization if it got bit on its derriere!
Critic: It’s French, that automatically makes it better than that Disney-fied American pap.
Reviewer: Yeah, like Disney would have ever dared even suggest the implications of the fate of toys in the Toy Story universe. Face it, Pixar can do no wrong.
Critic: A Bug’s Life.
Reviewer: It was just their second movie, and it’s still a brilliant send up of The Seven Samurai. Or maybe The Three Amigos, I’m not sure.
Critic: Cars.
Reviewer: Okay, ya got me there…
Critic: So in conclusion, WALL*E absolutely…
Reviewer: …rocked my socks off.
Critic: Well I thought that stupid little robot was a big pile of…
EVE slowly rises up from behind the chair of the Critic, her arm pointed towards his head.
Critic: Um, what does she want?
Reviewer: Word of advice, don’t tick off the heavily armed robot who blew a hole in her boyfriend’s roof because dragging him outside to be recharged just wasn’t fast enough.
The End
* Incidentally, how could that magnet and all the holographic ads still be working? Even if you assume that those windmills could still standing after seven centuries of violent windstorms, the idea that anything could be working besides WALL*E, given that all of his brothers and the obviously robustly built recycling equipment broke down is a bit off.
