All I want is to hold her hand..

In a documentary I saw a long time ago, a simple experiment was carried out where scientists observed the growth of bacteria in a petri dish. Yet, despite the condusive environment created for them, their growth stopped even before the air and nutrients and whatever provided to them is used up. This is because they already created much wastes in the environment that it has became inhabitable.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what will happen to earth in the future when humans have created so much wastes on the planet that it can no longer support lives. And that is the world Wall-E lived in. The humans has moved out of earth into space, leaving only a troop of automated robots to clean up the mess for their eventual return.

In the biginning of the movie, all these Wall-E has already broken down, leaving only a single unit to complete the task.There was already towers and towers of compacted trash but little Wall-E still has a long way to go.

Fortunately, his solitude hasn't yet bore him to death (or total breakdown) yet as he has a good and loyal friend in the form of a cockroach. Beside that, Wall-E also developed a hobby of collecting special items from the mountains of trash that surrounded him. It is also from here that he keeps himself going as he salvaged parts from broken down units of Wall-E. Come to think of it, that is probably how his hobby got started and how his personality grows. Anyhow, anyone noticed the resemblance to Stephen Chow's recent"CJ7"? Wasn't there also a cute little hero there who can fix stuffs and a man who collected "treasures" from the junkyard? Or am I thinking too much?

Anyway, if anyone noticed I was refering Wall-E in a masculine term, that is because this is a love story. After 700 years of doing what he was built for, a space ship from Axiom, a huge mothership city where the humans now lives, arrived on earth to dispatched a probe to determine earth ability to support lives. This probe, named Eve was obviously a female, although I don't understand the reason of assigning gender to robots, and she was sleek, aerodynamic and squeky clean, in stark contrast to the worn out and blocky Wall-E. They were two world apart, like a princess and a pauper. Like Charlize Theron and Danny Devito. Or Michelle Reis and Eric Tsang. Well, You get the picture.

Wall-E has a little idea of what romance is from old movies that he watched in his spare time but he just let his heart guide him along. Awww...

How good can a romance between two robots be, you asked? Well, have you ever meet a person who totally change your perception in lives and gave you new purpose? Ever just want to hold the hand of that special someone? If you ever have that feeling before, you will be able to relate to Wall-E because mechanical he may be but I can so feel his longing to just hold Eve's hand.

So Wall-E fell in love with Eve and tried but failed miserably to impress Eve until he saves her from a storm and took her to his home. She was actually quite impressed with erm.. what he does with his home. They became friends and much later in the movie, she fell for him too. Awww...

This little love story was just lovable but there was also a side story. What happened to the humans who abandoned earth 700 years ago. What has happened to them since and what have they become? Predictably, they returned to earth eventually and it was interesting how the story of how they continue their lives from then on was told during the closing credit through a series of art beginning with cave painting, followed by what appeared to be Egytian hieroglyph. It was the beginning of life anew on earth after all. They even followed that up with painting style of the Renaissane era, pointilism and the style employed by Van Gogh himself. Brilliant closure but that was another story. In the end, it is the romance between Wall-E and Eve that makes this movie.

A delightful movie and one I would categorize as a good date movie, especially at the beginning of a relationship. Wall-E is absolutely adorable. Beside his personality, the design team deserved credit for designing a look that appeared both cute and functional. If ever a robot was built to do what Wall-E does, I can definitely imagine it would looked like that.Ha ha.. Wall-E looked like a little boy with his schoolbag in this picture.

Oh.. as with all recent Pixar production, there was also a short story before the actual movie begins. Called Presto, it is a story of a magician and his magic hat and how his pet rabbit refused to cooperate with him on his tricks until he is fed. Very very funny. Some people are not aware of Pixar's choice to include a short animation as an openning and the worried lady next to me actually asked if she is in the screening of Wall-E. I don't blame her, I had the same reaction when I saw Rattatouile.

So go watch this film but if you saw the story of a magician instaed, don't worry. You are in the right theater.