Blu-ray review: Wall-E

Dan — Mon, 25 May 2009 11:00:46 +0000

I must admit that I’ve seen Wall-E before. In fact the movie was the first film both my kids saw at the cinema. It made quite an impression on Evan in particular. When we were watching Hannah Montana at the pictures the other week Evan kept asking indignantly when Wall-E was going to show up. To be honest I had a fair bit of sympathy for his protestations myself.

So, just in case you aren’t familiar with the plot, it concerns a lonely little garbage compactor robot left all alone on a polluted and desolate earth that has been abandoned by a consumerist and wasteful humanity. A probe droid, EVE, turns up looking for signs of life. Wall-E falls in love with her and follows her back into space.

It’s a good film. In fact it’s a great film, certainly amongst the best animated features that I’ve ever seen. It’s funny, engaging, innocent, and satirical all at the same time. But most of all it’s incredibly brave. Brave to spend the first 40 minutes or so with no dialogue at all, relying on body language, emotive beeping, and the pure skill of the animators in order to communicate what’s going on. And also brave to completely discard the convention of getting big name actors to do the voices. And as a result the movie comes across not just as a 98 minute advert for merchandising like so many animated films these days, but as a piece of lovingly executed art.

In short, I like it. I like it a lot.

And what’s more I like the Blu-ray format too. When we first got the player Kerry and I rented the Incredible Hulk just so we could put it through its paces. While we were impressed with the picture quality it didn’t really move any mountains for us.

But Wall-E on Blu-ray? Wow.

To say the picture was crisp would be an understatement. It’s so sharp that you could cut yourself on it. The scene where Wall-E and EVE are dancing in space made me come out in goosebumps just like it did in the cinema. It was beautiful; there’s just no other word to describe it. It’s obvious to me that Pixar and Blu-ray are pretty much made for each other, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the relationship between the two develops. The trailer alone for the forthcoming film Up was awe inspiring (those balloons look fantastic).

The features were pretty impressive too. Much more extensive than your average DVD. Of particular merit was a bonus exclusive blu-ray short cartoon called Burn-E, which is a story of a maintenance druid that takes place in and around the various scenes of the mean feature. Both Kerry and I found ourselves laughing out loud at it, and we’re generally a family that keeps our chuckles to ourselves. There were also games, commentaries, a documentary on the history of Pixar, 3-D set fly throughs, deleted scenes and all manner of other goodies. Not bad for about fifteen quid.

You can buy Wall-E at Amazon.co.uk here. Amazon also do a pretty good range of Blu-ray players too.

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Blu-ray review: Wall-E