WALL-E: One giant beep for mankind
It's a cartoon about a lonely robot who can't even speak, but America's leading critics are queuing up to hail Pixar's summer blockbuster as 'ET' meets 'Citizen Kane'. Tim Walker discovers why we're all about to fall for 'WALL-E' - and why it could even become the defining film of our times
The lunch at which he was created is the stuff of legend. In 1994, as production wrapped on their first full-length feature film, Toy Story, four of Pixar Animation's big guns gathered at a restaurant in California to talk through ideas for projects. At that single meeting, the writer-director Andrew Stanton and his colleagues sketched out on napkins the ideas for A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo - and one more movie, about a lonely robot left behind when humans abandon Earth. His name was WALL-E.
On Friday next week, this rusty little contraption will come clanking into Britain, bringing with him a colossal carbon footprint of critical acclaim after his $63m opening weekend in America's cinemas. The website Rotten Tomatoes, which collects reviews from major publications on both sides of the Atlantic and derives from them a percentage score for films, gives WALL-E a remarkable 96 per cent. Last year's winner of the best picture Oscar, the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, mustered 95 per cent.
(Source: theindependent.co.uk)
WALL-E will be in UK cinemas from July 18th.
To read more on why the critics are championing WALL-E for "Best Picture"at the 2009 Acdemy Awards, Click here.