In 2200 man’s overindulgence has created so much waste that the Earth is no longer inhabitable. The Buy n Large corporation is put in charge of cleaning up the Earth and puts humanity on a space liner for a five-year cruise while the Earth is made habitable again. Seven hundred years later the Earth is still being cleaned up by Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class, or WALL·E.
WALL·E's job is to gather all the garbage and turn it into cubes to clean the waste. It’s a bigger job than his designers planned so he’s slightly behind schedule. One day while going about his routine he discovers a plant beneath all the garbage. He recognizes this as something valuable and preserves it. Soon after he meets EVE, a more advanced robot and shows her the plant, which triggers the next set of programming in EVE.
They go back to the cruise ship to have the plant analyzed and go to the next step, but humanity has become lazier than ever, floating around in hover chairs, each person easily weighing over 500 pounds. Certain programs on the cruise ship know that the five-year plan was a ruse and that humanity would never return home. But this plant throws their programming off-kilter and WALL·E and EVE must fight to get humanity back home and start a new civilization.
The film can definitely be viewed as a commentary about mankind and our overindulgences and need for excess; however, the kids will love all the robots. In fact I watched it with my almost two-year-old who was running around saying “WALL·E!” just like WALL·E does when identifying himself to various robots and lifeforms. So the movie is fun for the whole family and works on multiple levels, but it's primarily a fun movie about robots. What more could kids and sci-fi lovers want?
WALL·E is packed with extras, starting with a feature-length audio commentary from director Andrew Stanton to kick things off. Stanton talks about the film’s origins, production, and themes and gives the viewer an interesting behind the scenes view of how this PIXAR film was made.
Up next are two animated shorts. BURN·E is a short about the repair robot viewers see on the space cruiser The Axiom. This almost could have been a deleted scene but it’s very entertaining. The short Presto was the one that preceded WALL·E in theaters and is about a magician and his hungry rabbit and how the rabbit disrupts his master’s performance due to lack of carrots. Quite fun considering there’s no dialogue.
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