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iView Author:Satarupa Joardar
(Baltimore, USA)
EMAIL: withheld

Title: Animated Visual Symphony: WALL-E

What do you call an animated movie which is part science-fiction, part musical, part comedy, and part drama? You call it WALL-E!

I have always been a fan of animated features but WALL-E is the best I have seen since Finding Nemo and it is little surprise that the two movies have the same parents. The Pixar team have taken the common Hollywood theme of the end of the earth and turned it into a visual symphony of such humor and depth of emotions that one cannot help but be enchanted by it.

WALL-E is an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth Class. Long after earth has become uninhabitable due to the large amount of waste created by a particular corporation BnL or Buy and Large, WALL-E has been assigned the job of cleaning up the mess. He does it with due diligence, locating and compacting the waste but in the process he also collects remnants of the bygone era. And his shed is a collection of assorted treasures like Zippo lighters, teddy bears, a Rubik’s cube and WALL-E’s most prized possession, a VHS tape of an old Hollywood musical, to which he tries to dance every night, after a long day’s work. This act is quite difficult for him as he himself is nothing more than a metallic box with nuts and bolts with legs like an army tank’s wheels! This all too human machine longs for companionship and his binocular-like eyes get all dopey whenever the romantic number in the musical plays and the man and the woman on the screen hold hands. WALL-E’s expression as he watches this is priceless and heart-warming.

The rest of the movie is about his finding a companion, in the form of a highly sophisticated, extra-terrestrial robot, EVE (another acronym) and the ensuing adventure. The first thirty minutes of the movie is devoid any dialogs. It is a collection of visuals and sounds that convey the emptiness of earth and WALL-E’s loneliness with perfection. The magic of animation meets basic human emotions to create a movie of such honesty and warmth that is sure to touch even the most cynical of moviegoer.

For an animation movie, WALL-E deals with several adult themes like consumerism and environmental catastrophe. The movie is a gentle, prophetic reminder that the present human society based on consumer capitalism is unsustainable in the long run.

Watch it!