Mr. Beaks Mulls WALL-E's Greatness!

(My apologies for the lateness of this review, but I didn't see WALL-E until Friday and wanted to give it a day or two to sink in. I openly discuss the ending of the film, so take the front-page spoiler tag very seriously. I also give away the ending of THE IRON GIANT, too.) When I first learned of the premise for Andrew Stanton's WALL-E (marooned robot charged with tidying up a wasteland called "Earth" finds true love), I irrationally decided it was a companion piece to Douglas Trumbull's SILENT RUNNING in which one of the surviving Dern-Drones ("Huey", "Dewey" or "Louie") discovers there's more to life than gardening. When I finally saw the titular, charmingly junky "Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-class" character at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con, I swooned at the E.T.-by-way-of-"Number-Five" design (and, most importantly, its Ben Burtt "voice"), and inexplicably overburdened the film with preordained greatness. No way the nerds at Pixar were going to whiff on their opportunity to make a big-hearted sci-fi classic. Given their Lucasfilm roots, WALL-E seemed like the film they were destined to make. The problem with anticipating a "masterpiece" is that even if the filmmaker delivers on such impossible promise, their vision will most likely prove divergent from yours. As a grown man who's not an idiot all day long, I've come to understand this. Still doesn't keep me from engaging in a multitude of "what ifs" when I see trailers for movies I'm insane over. This is why, for instance, it took me a few viewings of HEAT to get with its vacuum-sealed perfection; the Mann/De Niro/Pacino teaming was so monumental that I got caught up in what it "should be" rather than letting the picture simply be on its own terms. I did the same thing to BARTON FINK back in 1991, and, in the intervening years, it's gone from "good Coens" to "top-shelf Coens" in my estimation. I'm hoping the same fate will befall WALL-E, a film that's as flawlessly constructed as Pixar's previous high-water mark, TOY STORY 2, but, for whatever reason, feels like it's missing that climactic "oomph" that'll kick it into the all-time "all ages" stratosphere occupied by THE WIZARD OF OZ, DUMBO, E.T., THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T, THE IRON GIANT and maybe a very few others. Though Stanton flirts with a finale that would've devastated children (and probably shaved $100 million off its domestic box office tally - and, fair or not, I do wonder to what extent he considers such things*), he ultimately opts for an earned-but-safe denouement that feels frustratingly conventional: not only does he go for the, I think, third callback of the WALL-E reboot (the adorable readjusting of the eyes and such), he also repeats the "kiss", which feels more obligatory than exhilarating the second time around. It's "moment" recycling, and it's the kind of very mild misstep that occurs when a screenplay falls one setup/payoff short of what we'll call an "Alex Garcia". Or, to be less obscure, it's THE IRON GIANT concluding with Hogarth tearfully building an Erector Set replica of his blown-to-smithereens buddy rather than the last piece of the robot rolling out of his window bound for the Langjökull glacier. Look, it's a tribute to, if nothing else, the just-plain-greatness of WALL-E that I'm splitting hairs like this, but what else is there to discuss? Hopefully, you've already seen the film for yourself and marveled at Stanton's sublime, Chaplin-esque command of visual storytelling. You've gasped at the offhanded brilliance of WALL-E discarding the shiny diamond ring in favor of the chintzy felt box, chuckled at the malevolent HAL-ishness of the Axiom's computer, and delighted at the WALL-E/EVE zero-gravity pas de deux (with fire extinguisher). Stanton's film is stuffed with holy moments like this, which makes it the most consistently joyous piece of cinema I've seen all year; it's a keeper regardless of whether it packs that ineffable "oomph". Some have ascribed WALL-E's diminished emotional impact to the abrupt tonal shift at the outset of act two (i.e. it's a romance until the Axiom, at which point it becomes a socially conscious piece of sci-fi not unlike SILENT RUNNING), but, all told, it requires less of an adjustment than, say, the comedic-to-tragic 180 of THE GRADUATE - and that movie holds up okay. Mostly, I see WALL-E's arrival on the Axiom as equivalent to Dorothy setting foot in Oz, with the primary difference being that WALL-E is too focused on getting his girl back to register awe at his surroundings. In his eyes, awe isn't worth experiencing if he can't share it with EVE. But does Stanton's distaste for American lethargy (both physical and mental) gradually overwhelm the romance at the core of his narrative? Not at all. In fact, there's something truly touching about this forgotten caretaker of our irretrievably trashed planet inducing chaos and, finally, enlightenment in the name of love. Though some conservatives might be thin-skinned enough to get worked up over Fred Willard's buffoonish head-of-state declaring "stay the course" (a favorite slogan of W's daddy), that's like liberals getting their dander up over the depiction of the president as unabashed horndog in LOVE ACTUALLY (more interesting to me is the "blue is the new red" fashion statement, which could be taken as a criticism of Americans' political flightiness). It's also spectacularly beside the point: Stanton's overt theme is that our health will not improve and our planet will not heal if we don't get up off of our asses and do something about it. That's not a partisan message; that's common sense. True, Stanton lampoons this "eureka" moment with an on-the-nose Richard Strauss cue, but this isn't a swipe at obliviousness; it's just a hanging curveball that needed to find the center field bleachers. And none of this happens if a smitten WALL-E doesn't chase EVE all over the Axiom. Despite the gentle, MODERN TIMES-inspired satire, "true love" is the motor of this story. It's a lovely gesture, and it makes me smile, but there's a part of me that wonders whether we'd be referring to Stanton's film as genuflectingly brilliant if he left WALL-E's memory wiped at the end. Most of those aforementioned classics require some semblance of sacrifice: we assume Elliott will never see E.T. again, whilst another trip to Oz might leave Dorothy talking like Leon Spinks (Baum's fiction notwithstanding). But after a few we-know-you're-not-going-there scares, WALL-E's shipshape once again (like Uhura post-"The Changeling"). For all I know, kids will be plenty traumatized by the sight of WALL-E nearly dying twice, but the stakes were never high enough for me to think he wouldn't bounce back. So why is it that every time I watch E.T., I get caught up in the moment and believe he's a goner the minute he flatlines? And why did I expect WALL-E to go there? Perhaps it's the beginning of FINDING NEMO - particularly the unfinished version I saw in late '02, which, I swear, found Albert Brooks's Marlin mourning over the remaining, uneaten "half" of his wife. Stanton's never been afraid to acknowledge danger and/or death. But, aside from the drab visual palette in the early going and the expired WALL-E units scattered about the landscape (from which our protagonist scavenges in one nearly morbid scene), the movie seems bereft of morbidity. It only wants to disturb so much. I'll be seeing WALL-E again because I'd like to see it digitially projected (I saw the first act in brilliant 4k up at Pixar back in February, but never got invited to a proper press screening - mourn for me!). I'm hoping it'll go the HEAT/BARTON FINK route and improve with each viewing. If not, it'll just have to get consigned to that terribly overpopulated ghetto of "great movies. Oh, what a shame that'd be. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks

*This doesn't strand you in horrendous company, Mr. Stanton; Spielberg still has to contend with such presumptions, too (even though audiences fail to realize that his "happy" endings post-1986 - excluding the third and final INDIANA JONES movie - are typically anything but).