“Ta-da!” Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter---Earth-class) is the soulful robot left behind on planet Earth that has a passion for musicals (especially ‘Hello Dolly’). He comes to Blu-ray in a Three-Disc Special Edition looking great and with an amazing amount of special features (some exclusive to the format).
The Blu-ray is well worth the money for these features, and the film itself is simply charming! Within a disturbing apocalyptic world of a future Earth, this little trash compactor steals your heart away.
He is the only robot left on Earth and he continues to do his job (scooping up trashing and making it into neat little cubes). He finds some nostalgic things that will amuse and remind us of pop culture (such as the Rubik's Cube and the advent of the tableware called the ‘Spork’). If he finds something he likes, he keeps it, and his home is filled with his treasures.
Earth was abandoned long ago because trash was taking over. Wall-E’s only living friend is a cockroach, because, of course, we all know cockroaches can live through anything. The cockroach is proof to me that Disney can make anything charming.
Be prepared for the absence of voices in the first part of the film. The story is told through a series of squeaky sound effects and music. Wall-E doesn’t speak, because, of course, he is the only character besides the cockroach, so there is not much reason for verbal communication.
The cockroach doesn’t follow Wall-E on his adventure through space; rather he gets left behind (which might be a good thing). Another robot, EVE, has landed on Earth looking for life in the form of plants. EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) and Wall-E find each other, and Wall-E has just happened to find a real live plant and gives it to EVE.
Wall-E follows EVE into space and his adventures begin. He ends up finding where all the humans went - they are all fat and sit in chairs on a space station. On the ship, robots do everything for the humans – such as bring them drinks, clean up after them. Part of the fun of Wall-E is to see all of the robots and their jobs. The cleaner robot, M-O, is near and dear to my heart and I wish I had one of those little gadgets!
The plant comes into play because it proves that Earth is habitable again. Enter the robot villain, Auto, who looks like a wheel. He doesn’t want the humans to know of the plant. Of course, the human spirit is hard to squash - even after 700 years of sitting in remote controlled chairs and losing the use of a functioning neck! With the help of EVE, Wall-E sets out to set things right.
The special features are a great reason to buy the Blu-ray. The special features only on Blu-ray include Burn-e, an all new animated short with in-picture presentation by director Angus MacLane, Cine-Explore with Director Andrew Stanton, Geek Track: a pop-up commentary with Pixar’s Geek Squad, the Axiom Arcade which feature video games (my Blu-ray had trouble loading these, so they might not work on all players), and a feature that allows you to view the film in different angles.
The special features that are included on the Blu-ray and DVD versions include to sections, Robots and Humans and have a great variety entertainment. My children really enjoyed the Robots section - especially the short with Wall-e messing with various items such as a vacuum cleaner, a magnet, head phones, etc.
The Robots section is very kid friendly, and they really liked the feature that allowed them to click on the different robots and get a synopsis of each robot. There are a lot of robots to click on, but my ten year old watched them all and stayed quite fascinated (I lost interest and started writing this review).
Kathy Nyjamy also narrators a virtual storybook-like version of the film, which was really cool! A robot claw ‘turns’ the pages. My children also liked, this feature and I thought it was a different venue in which to tell the story with almost paper-like animation (on the Blu-ray, the animation for this looked really ‘textured’).
The Humans feature section is made more for grown-ups and includes the director talking about different decisions made in the film (i.e., the decision at the end to have Wall-E hurt and not EVE), various deleted scenes and storyboards, and making of featurettes.
The above mentioned special features are all in the extra disc included (the third disc in the set is a digital download of the movie). The disc that has the actual film also includes two shorts as well as Burn-e with boards.
The first short is Burn-E, giving a detailed look at the frustrations of the life of a poor, working robot. Burn-E’s job is to change the lights on the outside of the space station. Well, the events of the actual movie interfere with poor Burn-E’s job. This is a really cute idea - Burn-E in the actual film had a mere cameo, but this expanded into an excellent creative addition.
The animation for Wall-E is superb and seeing it in the 1080p Blu-ray picture only enhances the experience. The picture is so clear, things can be seen in Wall-E’s binocular like eyes. It’s like we see things the way he sees them. I don’t think I have ever seen an animated film that does this is such a way. The animation becomes a metaphor for Wall-E’s feeling and emotions and transcends into tangible abstraction.
With loads and loads of special features, this edition is a must have! Its great family apocalyptical entertainment and is highly recommended. Wall-E is adorable. I want to adopt him, and the cleaner robot can come to my house, too.
Wall-E (Three-Disc Special Edition) is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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