My experience of WallE was extremely positive. I was very impressed with the graphics and artwork in the film as well as the ability to maintain a storyline and engaging plot with minimal dialogue between the characters. Most of the time all they say is “WallE” or “Eve” since those are the only two words either character knows besides “plant”. The plant also plays a key role in the film. WallE discovers the plant early on in the film and it gives it to Eve who he falls in love with and it’s sort of like the ultimate gift. This is also symbolic because by Eve getting the plant, when she retrieves it back to the ship it’s supposed to allow everyone on board to return to Earth because it’s a sign of life on Earth, when the Earth was previously covered in trash.
The segmentation of the film was very clear to me and made the plot easy to follow. There were three main segments: WallE making trash piles by himself, WallE meets Eve, WallE and Eve go on the ship, WallE and Eve return to Earth with everyone from the ship.
The element of WallE that stood out to me most was the overall message of the film that it is important to take care of the environment and what the possible consequences may be if we do not. Not only does WallE depict the Earth as being covered in trash, but it also shows all the humans riding around on floating chairs and they are extremely oberse and stare at their screens all day. “Respondents argued over its depiction of futuristic humans and whether their (animated) shapes made them baby-like or obese,” (Howley). The article “Wall-E” by Ann Howey discusses briefly how it was debated whether or not it was appropriate for Wall-E to be a kids movie because of its “apocalyptic setting” but I think that it is important for young adults and children to see the impact their actions have because they will be the ones making important decisions that impact our lives in the future and films like WallE could have a lasting impact on them.
Another element that I thought was impressive in WallE was the use of sound throughout the film. The opening scenes play cheerful jazz music as WallE goes from place to place picking up trash and stacking it. This gives the audience that WallE is very innocent and somewhat content with life. Ann Howey also discusses how the use of this jazz music highlights the differences between the past and present, “The opening sequence of the film introduces this tension between future and past. As the ‘camera’ moves through (animated) outer space, moving eventually through our solar system to a futuristic, garbage-covered Earth, the images are accompanied by the song ‘Put on Your Sunday Clothes’ from the 1960s film musical Hello Dolly! (Kelly US 1969)–the song begins, fittingly, ‘Out there …’. As Andrew Stanton remarks in his Director’s Commentary for the DVD, ‘juxtaposing sci-fi and the future with retro old stuff’ was a deliberate strategy,”(Howey). I was also impressed that the movie was able to carry a storyline so well even without having that much dialogue between the main characters besides them saying “WallE” or “Eve”.
The critical conversations I read about WallE briefly discuss its appropriateness for children given that it’s a Disney movie due to it’s “paramount environmental message”. But overall critics reviewed WallE in a positive light and admired its use of visual settings and symbolism as well as sound throughout the film, “when Wall-E escapes the self-destructing life-pod and meets Eve on her way to rescue him, the resulting dance-in-space has more to do with visual spectacle than scientific possibility,” (Howey). Critics also admired the relationship between humans and technology in the film, “the film humanises ‘good’ technology–robots such as Wall-E and Eve who work in the best interests of humanity,” (Howey).
I would agree with critics that WallE does an excellent job utilizing sound and visual effects to optimize the viewing experience but I would disagree that the environmental message is too “paramount” or “apocalyptic” for young children to view. There’s nothing graphic in the film to suggest that it would be inappropriate for children, the director is simply just trying to highlight an important environmental message to viewers.