WALL-E(2008)

WALL-E, Pixar's latest offering follows the story of the last robot left on Earth. But despite the apocalyptic backdrop, it manages to present an interesting question about society while retaining a happy ending. While this is nothing new for children's films, it's a refreshing change from the current trend of bleak dystopia. When Doctor Who offers floating murderous obsidian as humanity's inescapable evolutionary fate, something needs to pick up the slack. WALL-E uses science fiction as a backdrop to explore the importance of individuality and how it can save us.

Earth, long ago trashed and abandoned by humans is left to the robots to clean up. One by one, they all break down until just one WALL-E unit is left, presenting the perfect stage for old-style pantomime. Pixar's design team has done a good job, presenting a main character whose mechanical parts blend storytelling necessity with obligatory functionality. Shovel arms serve as splendidly expressive hands. In an inspired scene, WALL-E fumbles to put on his treads in the same way people struggle with their slippers after waking up. Not since Johnny 5 has a robot gotten so much mileage out of face made of just two camera lenses.

WALL-E's interactions are easy to understand and surprisingly human. Like a mime artist, he shows and does, rather then explains. His difficulty playing paddle ball and his confusion with a brassiere reflect the playful curiosity of every inner child. And like this reviewer, WALL-E works all day, palming little souvenirs he comes across and, at the end of the day, adding them to the collection of toys he has stuffed into every nook and cranny of his swanky bachelor pad, which is meticulously organized but a little dusty. Did I mention his sweet home theater system? WALL-E and his dusty, barren stage embody the best qualities of pantomime, theater and silent film masters of old.

Into this world comes EVE, a sleek piece of modern design. Like an iPod, every function is integrated into the beautiful, seamless shape of the whole. There's something beautiful but clinical and antiseptic about her, and it's not just how she callously takes potshots with her laser gun. EVE pursues her command with singular efficiency until the lack of success drives her to frustration, unlike WALL-E, who hums a happy tune despite the overwhelming burden of the almost-Sisyphean cleanup task, readily investigating anything that piques his curiosity. And let's face it, which one of the two experiences more job satisfaction?

There's a brief moment of personality when EVE breaks free of her programming and makes a flyby of the landscape, but it's not until WALL-E introduces her to his treasure trove of human artifacts and puts on a little musical dance number that she truly shows a spark of personality. This contrast of new versus old continues when EVE is introduced to the MacGuffin, a plant sapling recovered by WALL-E. What sentience she has is overridden, turning EVE into a blank vessel whose only purpose is keeping the plant safe until she is picked up and returned to an outer space vessel waiting for her. WALL-E continues his ideal romantic production, taking her on boat rides and to scenic sunsets despite her inability to respond or even acknowledge his efforts. But ultimately it wouldn't matter; his pure-hearted affection is its own reward. Finally, EVE is picked up to be returned to a deep space vessel, and our love-struck trash compactor friend follows out of devotion.

The ship in question is a human luxury cruiser, a monument to the path of least-resisted instant gratification. Comfort and ease have been taken to their endpoint, introduced earlier and earlier into peoples' lifespan until every hour of every day is spent in effortless pampered leisure. A joke cribbed from Clueless shows two individuals, feet apart, speaking through their video messaging systems. Virtual golf is even farther removed from its Wii predecessor, requiring only a finger movement (or perhaps that's a regression to PS2 versions). Automation rules and the humans are content to be well-fed and taken care of, unaware or uncaring of what else is lost in the upkeep of the lifestyle.

This is the world where, even when the ship's captain is presented with the plant, living proof of Earth's ecological recovery, the automated pilot is able to supersede his authority and preserve the status quo. There is no fascist enforcement of conformity because it's not needed. Everyone is happily cared for and any change in mandate can be presented as choice, whereupon the neglected, but not extinct, need for change propels every one to adopt it as if it were law. It is a state where man and machine continue in mindless equilibrium.

Like the sledgehammer-wielding sprinter of Apple's 1984 ad, WALL-E stumbles into this world and destroys the cruise liner's ecosystem, although perhaps a bit more charmingly. Individual after individual comes across our grimy, quirky hero and begin to transform. A lady sees the world past her view screen. A cleaning droid stops slavishly following marked paths. A robot meant only to push buttons is introduced to the joys of waving hello. The captain stands under his own power. Working alone, WALL-E can do little but vainly outrun the enforcement droids. With the help of his friends, each one finally thinking outside of their given roles, WALL-E succeeds in returning humanity to its home.

Detractors point at WALL-E and complain that it is overly critical of capitalism and environmental damage. Some even consider it to be an exploration into post-human civilization, as we are doomed to extinction. While WALL-E is an examination of human society and the implications of current trends, it is not judgmental. No one is irredeemable except the overly-rigid. WALL-E's infection of uniqueness propels people to look for what went wrong or missing and work towards correcting it. The earth recovers, humans rediscover their resourcefulness, and machines reach beyond their programming. Is there a need to look for a successor when, at least in the print that I watched, hundreds of humans standing around as a child waters the salvaged plant, none of them gagging on toxic fumes (although science begs the question where the oxygen came from). It's not a clear-cut answer, but it ends the film with a note of hope.

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10,000 B.C. (2008)

[ARCHIVE: This was the first article I wrote in a pact with my once-and-future-roommate, in an effort to get ourselves writing again. She has yet to finish her part of the bargin.]

There’s a moment in every movie when you realize exactly what it is you’re watching. Usually, it happens early in the movie. While the opening credits roll, the director has set the tone and mood with shots or sounds that will tell you what kind of approach is being employed. Many times, people go in knowing already knowing what to expect. After all, why would the audience be in that theater if they weren’t looking for what was on display in the television commercials? But sometimes the movie takes longer, trying to build suspense or lull one into a false sense of security. Sometimes it works. But more often than not, you’re left with a crowd that feels confused or cheated. So it is with 10,000 B.C.

Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) tackles the film with the same grandstanding of his previous blockbusters. The landscape takes center stage, highlighted by shot after shot of beautiful, diverse locations. The film attempts to instill a sense of awe in the wild land, untouched by civilization, thrusting it in our faces with the same reverence as a newly discovered specimen long thought extinct. And in this way the movie works, if somewhat clumsily. Frosty mountain ranges, humid rain forests, arid deserts; each setting is unkempt and unique from afar. Until, of course, the humans walk into frame. Suddenly, one is too aware of how artificial the snow lands or the pristine condition of the desert huts.

The actors are no help, their hair falling into unnaturally parted messes, their grime too fresh to be more than minutes old. There’s just too much beauty in the features of the main actors that one really can’t look past the hair weaves and the mid-west accents. Which is a shame because they really try their best with what they are given. Stephen Strait (The Covenant) plays D’Leh, a young mammoth hunter that sets out from a dying tribe after not to find help for his people, but to save Evolet (played by When A Stranger Call’s Camilla Belle), the blue-eyed tan-skinned beauty taken from him during a raid by “four-legged demons.” While not offensive on paper, the lack of direction leaves the principle actors to stumble their way unconvincingly through dialogue that feels unnaturally constructed for any time period. We learn as much in a nauseating scene where D’Leh professes his love for Evolet to be as constant as the North Star.

While I’d like to say that it’s all downhill from there, such a statement would be misleading. We are carried through the movie by Cliff Curtis, cast in the role of Tic Tic, the Obi-Wan to D’Leh’s Luke Skywalker. Equal parts stoic and empathetic, Curtis plays the elder hunter with steady hand. His paternal relationship with the young hero is nuanced and believable. Equally good is Joel Virgel, who plays ally chieftain Nakudu. Although a relatively inexperienced actor, Virgel brings an intensity to the part that underscores the tribesman’s drive to free his kidnapped son. While Strait tells us of D’Leh’s devotion, Virgel shows us with a furrow of Nakudu’s brow or in the way he grips his spear.

Unfortunately for us, the film takes these two bright spots and packages them with a bungling protagonist as they traipse from one disaster to another. The action sequences are too few and too brief, over before you can really understand what has transpired. The computer-generated animals (and when you make a prehistoric film, there are many) are not believable from any angle, a fact that is all the more clear when the film awkwardly attempts to have the actors interact with their digital costars. This might be forgivable (what digital action sequence is without flaw?) if the story could carry us from one inelegant dance to the next. It is there that the movie fails most completely and unforgivably.

The idea of a primitive human tribe traversing exotic locales and eventually brushing against a celebrated and highly regarded ancient civilization is nothing new. Most recently the formula was revisited in Mel Gibson’s primal film Apocalypto, and while the two share a lot of superficial similarities, the same cannot be said of quality. Gibson’s movie, at its core, is an escape film that used the adrenaline of doomed captivity to draw the audience along. In contrast, Emmerich tries to shoehorn lessons about race relations, slavery, ancient prophecy and environmental spiritualism so that nearly every line of dialogue drips with obvious, ham-fisted double-meaning (right down to the deus ex machina happy ending). Added on top is a thick layer of cheese borne from romantic exchanges that seem to be cribbed from teen dramas.

In the end 10,000 B.C. is a mess of a film that could only please the English-speaking cavemen that it portrays.

FINAL SCORE: 1.5 out of 4

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