WALL-E - DVD review

Well, they've done it again. Through amazing animation and skillful storytelling, the Disney-Pixar gang has found a way to make us care about a trash-compacting robot whose attitude toward work and life might even provide a little inspiration for humans. Same with the movie itself, which obviously hopes to inspire the next generation to be better stewards of the earth and consume less.

In his theatrical review for DVD Town, Jason Vargo gave "Wall-E" a 7 out of 10 because of its "left wing 'green' theme." But I didn't find the film's truth to be nearly as inconvenient as Jason did. Unlike "Bambi," where the obvious theme of man's hunting and carelessness is a point-of-view thing, the green elements form the structural core of this film. It would be hard to make it any other way. So while I would agree with Jason that "Wall-E" is a blatant advocacy film, I would also point out in that respect it's not unlike "The Ten Commandments" and its heavily Christian theme. The question for me is how artful the presentation, and in the case of both the Cecil B. DeMille classic and this soon-to-be classic, there's plenty to praise. In fact, if artistry were seismographic, "Wall-E" would register off the charts.

All you have to do is compare "Wall-E" to the 2005 Fox animated feature "Robots," which was certainly a competent bit of animation. But you never believed that those characters were anything more than cartoon robots. With Wall-E, you become instantly fascinated by the amount of personality that animators were able to infuse into such a tiny little garbage-compacting package. The eyes are the window to the soul, and Wall-E's eyes are as expressive as anyone's. This little guy, who, besides a cockroach friend, is the only sign of movement and intelligent thought left on the trash pile that used to be Planet Earth, has a work routine, and by golly, he's going to do his job, even there's no supervisor around and even if workload is impossible. Talk about a work ethic! The amount of trash skies higher than the skyscrapers and there's no sign of life, yet buoyed by an old VHS tape he found of "Hello, Dolly!" this diminutive robot imagines a world "Out There" and figuratively decides to "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" to make the best of things. Like the Dwarfs in Disney's first full-length animated feature, this little guy basically whistles while he works, though conditions are less than ideal.

Earth's bleak landscape features sudden storms that Wall-E must deal with, but he's got his own refuge: the inside of a big piece of machinery in which he stores all of the trash treasures he's rescued, collecting them in a secret stash the way that Ariel did in "The Little Mermaid." Old Christmas lights decorate the inside, and this solar-powered robot has also managed to collect spare parts for himself. He may be a Waste Load Lifter--Earth Class, but he's no dummy. Even cartoon characters get smashed up a bit, and this guy can be his own doctor.

Things change, though, when a rocket ship lands, dropping off a high-tech flying robot probe that's been sent to Earth to check for signs of plant life. It's the first creature besides the cockroach that Wall-E has seen, and so it's predictably love at first sight. EVE, meanwhile, has been programmed to be just a little bit cautious . . . and trigger-happy. Any sudden movements, and this kid blasts away. Here too, you have to credit the filmmakers for giving us a robot love story that unfolds in romantic comedy tradition and ups the ante in the caring department.

It turns out that Earth has been a trash heap for the past 700 years, and the residents who had been urged to consume, consume, consume by a Big Brother conglomerate that in the future has become one gigantic corporation have been living in a spaceship waiting for the clean-up to be finished. Well, with one tiny robot slaving away, that's going to take some time. Obviously, corporate greed takes a hit here, as does the bigger-is-better mentality that's driven American consumerism for the past 50 years. People in the future do nothing but sit in movable beach chairs and suck down whatever food and drink is handed to them, watch whatever propaganda is displayed on individual screens before them, and atrophy in a blissful state of ignorance. Video gamers take a hit too, as creators project that America's entire sedentary culture will result in a fat, bovine life far removed from the world of nature that ought to have been sustaining us.

Yes, it's heavy-handed--or just plain heavy, as when one fat person falls out of his seat and needs robots to help him up again, or when the ship tilts and all the fat folks fall helplessly like a pile of Weebles. But I happen to think its pure genius for the Pixar folks to combine an ecological crisis with what the Endocrine Society is calling an Obesity Crisis. Sixty-seven percent of American males and 62 percent of American females are considered overweight. The society estimates that 400,000 people die each year as a result of poor diet and low physical activity. What's surprising to me is that Disney, an outfit that's usually so overly cautious about offending anyone to the point where we'll probably never, ever see a film like "Song of the South," would show overweight people in such a bad light. But there they are, and the Pixar people are obviously hoping this film will make a difference. From a storytelling perspective, though, the people are victims of the most heinous sort of corporate takeover, and from there it's only a short leap from to a "2001: A Space Odyssey" confrontation.

For "Wall-E" the Disney artists created two separate worlds, one a denuded, bleak, and post-apocalyptic landscape, and the other a glitzy and colorful "Jetsons"-style world of the future in which everything is programmed and automated, and robots that have been created to serve the humans can start to seem (at least to an outsider) more like jailers. What's amazing to me is the level of detail in Wall-E's world, with each individual piece of garbage rendered in striking detail that looks all the more striking in High Definition. That director Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo") and his animators are able to make such a bleak world still feel warm enough to support the most meager level of life is a real tribute to their skills, and that Stanton and fellow screenwriter Pete Docter ("Monsters, Inc.," "Toy Story") were able to hold an audience's interest with essentially a single non-human character doing his thing for the first third of the film. Though Ben Burtt handles the voice of the robot, he speaks very few recognizable words. The rest of his vocabulary are distinct, evocative sounds, and so we watch Wall-E with the same fascination that held us in thrall as we watched Tom Hanks shoulder the narrative burden in "Cast Away." You really have to see it to believe that such warmth and narrative interest could be generated by not just non-human robots, but drawn ones at that. Who would have thought that a robot love story combined with a cautionary fable about over-consumption would be such a hit?

Elissa Knight gives limited voice to EVE (short for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) the love of Wall-E's life, while Jeff Garlin ("Curb Your Enthusiasm") is the Captain, Pixar good-luck charm John Ratzenberger has a cameo as one of the fatties, and Sigourney Weaver is the voice of the computer. Just as there are two animated worlds, there are two worlds of humans in this film, one a cartoon version and the other the world of the past that comes to Wall-E and others through videotapes, involving real humans from "Hello, Dolly!" and BnL (Big and Large) CEO Shelby Forthright (played by Fred Willard) in a PSA. It's another curious aspect that makes "Wall-E" the successful risk that it is. Message-laden or not, "Wall-E" is an artistic triumph which raises the bar yet again for animators who will follow.

Video:
When I saw "Wall-E" on Blu-ray, I thought, Wow. But while this DVD looks really good, I didn't have the same reaction. Even in the second half of the film when we're aboard the Axiom there are moments when you notice that the details aren't as precise, or when the colors seem just a little off. So for those who have Blu-ray players, this is one title where you can see a noticeable difference. I talked about how the apocalyptic terrain had a strange warmth in the Blu-ray, but you lose some of that warmth in standard definition. How, I can't explain, but it's different. Still, if you compare "Wall-E" to other DVDs, it comes out looking pretty good. There are also a number of scenes where the level of detail approaches Hi-Def, and the colors do pop out at you with their brilliance. "Wall-E" is presented in the original theatrical aspect of 2.35:1.

Audio:
The featured audio is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround EX, with 2.0 Surround another option. Again, this DVD suffers by comparison to the Blu-ray, but comes out on top if you compare it with another DVD. In fact, some might even prefer the 2.0 option because it offers a stronger center-speaker presence with more dynamics, and so some might actually prefer that mix. There are subtitles for the hearing impaired.

Extras:
This is the three-disc set, which includes first and foremost a third disc that's a digital copy. The other two discs contain probably as many bonus features as the most recent offering from Pixar, "Ratatouille."

My kids loved the animated shorts. "Burn-E" is shot as if we were getting a fourth-camera alternate version of what happens to a minor robot character in the film when the action moves away from him. It's an ingenious concept to begin with, and very funny-though not as hilarious as a second cartoon, "Presto," which opened for "Wall-E" in the theaters. This one was a hoot, shot visually in styles that were reminiscent of both old Disney cartoons from the Fifties but with action and gags that recall Warner Brothers cartoons from the Forties.

Pixar commentary tracks have always been wonderful to listen to, and this one is no exception. Stanton does a good job of sustaining a believable energy and interest level through what must be a difficult task, these commentaries.

Disc one also features "Animation Sound Design: Building Worlds from the Sound Up," and interesting 19-minute that zeroes in on the ways in which sound helped to make those robots seem almost human. Then there's a 50-second preview for the "Wall-E's Tour of the Universe" video game.

On Disc two, the big bonus feature for Pixar fans is "The Pixar Story," a 2007 documentary that tells you everything you need to know about this upstart studio, with plenty of recollections from actors like Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, along with appearances from players like George Lucas and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. And it's all in the family, too, produced by the granddaughter of legendary Disney animator Ub Iwerks.

Fans of deleted scenes will find roughly 20 minutes of them here, in various states of completion, playable with optional introductions by Andrew Stanton. There's another visual commentary option that teams character supervisor Bill Wise with story artist Derek Thompson and lead animator Angus McClain, with producer Lindsay Wallace also weighing in. This track isn't as serious as Stanton's, but there's still a lot of information--very little of it overlapping.

The Blu-ray had a four-pack of games, which is another reason why I'd recommend buying it over the DVD. This one has only a build-a-bot game that's built into the robot storybook, and it's for the tiniest of tots. Then there's a brief montage of Wall-E and his treasures.

Film fans get a production design feature on "The Imperfect Lens: Creating the Look of Wall-E" (14 minutes), "Life of a Shot: Deconstructing the Pixar Process" (5 minutes), "Robo Everything" (6 minutes) in which Stanton and his crew talk about the concept, another snippet on the creation of "Wall-E and EVE" (7 minutes) mixing clips with talking heads, a 10-minute "Notes on a Score," and "Captain's Log," an 8-minute feature that has Stanton and the others talking about that character.

I have to say, though, that I absolutely HATE the packaging. It's a double pull-out cardboard case that's similar to the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" packaging, only without the plastic inserts to hold the discs. The three discs are simply tucked inside the cardboard, with two of them overlapping. The pockets for the second and third discs are really tight, too. It might be convenient to have the flaps on each side (which you lift to expose the discs) tell exactly what's on them, but it's cheap and doesn't speak to the care that most people who collect take with their DVDs. I know from experience that discs simply slipped into a cardboard sleeve run a greater risk of being scratched. Each year, OFCS members get current films sent to them for awards screening, and those discs are only good for two or three plays before some of them start messing up because of those sleeves and the scratches the discs invariably get. What's surprising is that Disney would try this packaging with a big title. I understand that the 100 percent recyclable cardboard container is supposed to be in keeping with the movie's theme, but I don't think this is the best for longterm play of the discs. Collectors deserve better. If saving resources were really a concern, then why not omit all the unnecessary cardboard sleeves that cover many of the DVDs and Blu-rays these days?

Bottom Line:
"Wall-E" cleverly offers three things in one: a robot love story, a cautionary fable, and another Pixar demonstration in how to create a richly detailed and textured world that surpasses everything previously done. And if Wall-E isn't the cutest Disney animated hero in the longest time, he's certainly one of them. Somewhere in the "Cars" town of Radiator Springs, I suspect Lightning McQueen is getting jealous! But real fans will gravitate toward the Blu-ray. There's more goodies, and the packaging isn't as chintzy.