ANIMATED EXTRAVAGANZA 1 : OK LET'S START WITH A FUTURE CLASSIC - "WALL-E"!

I’m now going to let you in on a little secret. I am a very VERY big softie indeed, so much so that I was slightly nervous about watching Wall-e. No, I can explain. I just skimmed the beginning of the synopsis you see. Dead planet. Cute little robot all by himself. He doesn’t know where anyone else is. I shuddered long and hard, decided it would probably make me cry, pushed it way back to the bottom of my “to watch” pile and actively ignored it, if you see what I mean. My friends ranted and raved about it, it won an Oscar ®, heck it won a whole host of awards, I still didn’t care. Well “Requiem For A Dream” is also a brilliant movie but you may well need a course of anti-depressants or a few sessions of counseling after watching it. So there I was, happily pretending “Wall-e” never happened when this years’ Oscar® nominations were announced. I had stumbled across Wall-e a couple of days earlier. I stuffed it back to the bottom of the pile of course but the argument that the fact that you might need counseling or anti-depressants is NOT a valid argument for not watching Requiem For A Dream had occurred to me. And I was sadly behind on watching this year’s nominations, so there really didn’t seem to be much of an excuse anymore… I sighed deeply, armed myself with a mug of tea (the British cure for shock) and plenty of tissues and hunkered down in front of the television set. Feel free to call me an idiot. What can I tell you, I should have trusted Pixar Studios.
Now, let’s get our story straight. Wall-e is indeed a cute little robot living on a dead planet earth. He lives on Planet Earth, 800 years from now. He has a happy if rather monotonous existence; his only friend is a little beetle and Wall-e goes around by himself tidying up New York City. Well there is a lot of city to tidy up, mountains of trash and discarded objects everywhere but at least all the human beings have left (all though God only knows where to and how). Wall-e trundles around collecting objects that seem interesting to him and watching old musicals (Hello Dolly to be exact) when he is off duty. Wall-e would like to fall in love, just like in the movie but he is all alone (except the beetle) so that is very much that. Until… One day a loud, noisy and rather scary spaceship leaves behind another robot. She is called EVE, she is white and she is nothing like anything Wall-e has ever seen… It’s love at first sight for Wall-e, Eve is slightly more dubious but it seems to be going well, until… Eve is stricken by a mysterious disease, shuts down and is taken back by the giant spaceship. Now, having found true love, wall-e is darned if he’s going to lose it that quickly so he stows away on the spaceship to “save” Eve. He soon finds himself in the middle of something quite epic. The future of mankind depends on Wall-e and Eve; they must save the humans from what probably is their most dangerous enemy. Themselves…
You probably know or have guessed that the undertones of the film (none too subtle at that…) the environment, saving the planet and being pro-active about it. As in getting off your backside and actually doing something (you’ll see EXACTLY what I mean when you watch the film). There have been many films of many different genres on the topic. Indeed it is a topic that cannot grow old or stale until we actually DO something to save our poor planet but that is beside the point. The point is, there have been VERY few films as good as Wall-e. The characters are sweet to “t”. The new worlds created… Well, it’s Pixar, vintage Pixar… I always admired that corporation now I know why some people are out and out fans of it. I SHOULD know I’m now officially one of those fans! It will stretch your imagination to the limits and it will make you think about what we very well may become in 800 years if we go on like this. Heck, it might even push you into trying and doing something to stop it. Personally I would much prefer this to be forever thought of as a wonderful tribute to human imagination as opposed to a film “full of foresight”… If you see what I mean…