WALL·E is about a little robot who gathers garbage, compresses it into tiny little cubes and stacks them neatly. At one time he was one of thousands charged with the task of cleaning up the rubble that humans discarded everywhere before deserting the planet. Now he’s all alone, trying to make the planet hospitable again. WALL·E’s personality sets him apart from other robots. While he’s out crushing junk, he also collect’s knick-knack’s he finds curious, such as an egg beater or a Rubik’s Cube and keeps them in the little home he’s made for himself. Still, the robot is lonely enough that a cockroach is his only company. Life is boring until, naturally, a “woman” comes along to add some spice to it.

In this case, the fembot is EVE, an aerodynamic robot that looks to have flown into the movie right out of Steve Jobs’ imagination. Ultra-sleek, light digital display, and completely seamless, EVE comes into WALL·E’s life and ultimately befriends him – before finding a plant and going into sleep mode. When EVE’s shuttle arrives to pick her up, WALL·E grabs hold and travels through space until eventually finding what remains of human civilization.  

WALL·E is an amazing film, and with Pixar’s shift away from anthropomorphic animals and onto more general themes, between this and their last film Ratatouille, they’ve come close, if not surpassed, creating an animated film created more with adults in mind than their children. WALL·E is about as un-child friendly as I’ve seen a “Disney” movie get. There is no song-and-dance numbers, despite WALL·E’s fascination with Hello, Dolly. There isn’t a real colorful villain. There isn’t even any real dialogue for the first half of the film which if that wasn’t intentionally designed to invoke comparisons to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the design of the human ship’s co-pilot in the second half certainly was.  

Now, Ratatouille held back quite a bit on the pandering post-Walt “Princess” style storytelling too. It stripped most of the buddy comedy found in prior films and replaced it with a Topo Gigio meets Bella Martha/No Reservations plot, essentially creating the truest animated romantic comedy to date. WALL·E continues along this line and creates quite possibly the best adult science fiction film in recent memory. A successful sci-fi film has a number of requirements, but in my experience it’s the films that have something to say that matter the most. Films like Godzilla, A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, or more recently Code 46 and Serenity all have social or political commentary embedded into the very fabric of the film stock. From early trailers that I saw back in 2007, I thought WALL·E was going to be an animated redux of Short Circuit. I grossly underestimated this film. 

Now, this still being marketed as a children’s film, the social commentary made obvious throughout the film is fairly obvious, as it isn’t particularly layered. But having any at all is certainly commendable for a kids film, especially since older children will be able to easily pick up on the messages that the “disposable” culture is destroying the habitability of our planet, and when faced with these and other conveniences, we become lazy fat and useless. I’m sure both Billy Banks and Al Gore really dig WALL·E. I can’t tell you how thankful I am for the maturity that WALL·E brings the Western animated genre.  

But hey, even if you don’t like movies that tell you what to think, make you think, or even encourage you to… think… a little bit… it’s still a very pretty movie which should make you oooh and ahhh. As evidenced in its… 

Presentation
Pixar’s previous two theatrical Blu-rays, Cars and Ratatouille, really set benchmarks for animation on the HD format, and WALL·E continues to serve Blu-ray well. The film is a stunner that translates perfectly for a high definition experience. This is demo material, and one you will want to test your new equipment on. There are no blemishes. No artifacts. Nothing except glorious HD picture, and the same can be said for the audio. The surround track is immersive, every speaker gets a workout (even in space scenes – deal with it) and the actual effects are pristine. WALL·E could be the best Blu-ray on the market. It definitely is one of the best in my collection. 

Extras
Extras are spread out across the first two discs with the third being only necessary to activate your Digital Copy (in case you absolutely must watch WALL·E on your iPhone), which I find a waste of raw materials that WALL·E will ultimately be crushing in his chest cavity in 150 years or so. All of the extras are in HD, something that’s thankfully becoming more common.  

The extras are plentiful, but ultimately hit or miss. In my opinion, the first disc (with the movie) has the best extras. There is a PiP commentary with director Andrew Stanton. The PiP function is exclusive to the Blu-ray. There’s a second commentary (also Blu exclusive), done in the Mysterey Science Theater 3000 style with silhouettes of four Pixar staff members talking about whatever hits their minds. This is the party track to offset the more serious Stanton commentary. Both are good, but if you want the meat, you’ll go with the first one. The short films BURN·E (with PiP storyboards) and Presto which was shown before WALL·E theatrically are also included. BURN·E follows the adventures of another robot during the main film, showing some of the events from a new perspective (Kind of like Jack-Jack Attack on The Incredibles DVD). Presto is a cute short about a magician’s rabbit that will beat and humiliate his master if he’s hungry enough. Both of these are very funny and worth watching.  

The second disc is a lot less filling, despite being packed with goodies. There are a bunch of deleted scenes, most of which are incomplete (storyboards or early animation), and to be honest, don’t add very much. Their exclusion is nothing to lose sleep over. Three mini featurettes, “The Imperfect Lens: Creating the Look of WALL·E”, “Animation Sound Design: Building Worlds” and “Captain’s Log: The Evolution of Humans” will scratch your behind-the-scenes itch for just over a half an hour. Then there are some BNL (That’s Buy-N-Large) shorts which are seen throughout the film, only now unedited and in their full format.  

There is a lot of “kiddie” stuff on this disc which is barely amusing (and I try to place myself in the target demographic, but crap is crap). “WALL·E’s Treasures and Trinkets” has our titular robot er… doing stuff… with stuff. What? “WALL·E’s Tour of the Universe” is a trailer for… something… on the film’s website? “Lots of Bots” is a Dr. Seuss inspired bit of rhyming tomfoolery which might interest the under 4 set for a few minutes. There’s a narrated gallery talking about each of the robots in the film, and then the film’s trailers. 

The real gem of the second disc is The Pixar Story – a 90-minute pushing documentary about the rise, and rise, and rise of Pixar. It’s sort of an expanded version of the already great documentary included on Pixar: Short Films Collection – Volume 1. It’s well worth your time if you’re a fan. 

There are some fun, if only time-killing Blu-ray exclusives here as well. You get animated fly-thrus of the Axiom spaceship where the humans thrive. Then there are four arcade games which each owe quite a bit to 80’s historic tabletops. For example, Eve’s Bot Blaster is a complete knock off of Asteroids, and M-O’s Mop-Up Madness has you picking up the dirt that WALL·E keeps trailing around the Axiom kind-of sort-of like Pac-Man, as you’ll be dodging other ghosts (er… robots). Each of these games uses the 8-bit style sprites that you see in the end credits of the main feature. It’s a pretty neat out-of-the-box idea, I must admit. 

That’s about the jist of it. A lot of stuff, and a lot of fluff. I can’t help but recommend it though since it has something for a fan of every age. 

Oh I almost forgot that there is some BD-Live stuff, but so far it hasn’t been made available, so I can’t tell you what we’ll get. Surprises! Yay! 

The Bottom Line
If you like animated movies, or if you like sci-fi movies, or if you like good movies, you must buy WALL·E. Don’t rent it. Don’t add it to the bottom of your Netflix queue underneath The Banger Sisters which you’ve been bumping down but not watching because you just don’t love your wife that much. Buy this Blu-ray, and buy it now. Your home theatre will thank you for it.