My latest attempt to read a good selection of Hugo nominees prior to the announcement of the winners failed utterly. They were not anywhere to be found in New Zealand. The winners were announced last weekend, and the winner of the ‘Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form’ was the Pixar animated movie WALL-E

The previews and reviews of this film really didn’t inspire me when it was released, so it was not until I heard it had won that I had any inclination to watch it. As I’m sure you know, the story follows a waste management robot in the future, whose job is to clean up waste on earth, while humanity waits in a fully automated ship in space. Probes are sent to Earth periodically to see if life has regenerated, and WALL-E eventually falls in love with one of these EVE probes.

It was a critical and box office success, winning the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and the 2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and was nominated for five other Academy Awards, as well as the Hugo nod. To be honest, I’m really not sure why!

To give it its due, the film is funny, the characters well portrayed, charming and sweet. The animation is incredible. As light entertainment, it ticks all the boxes. But for me, a Hugo winner needs to be a lot more than that. Yes, it is set in the future, has robots and artificial intelligence, but it just doesn’t feel like ’science fiction’ to me. It’s a kids story. What themes there are are lightly portrayed, barely brushing the surface of the psychie. Director and conceptional creator Stanton felt the moral of the film was ‘Irrational love defeats life’s programming’, which does hold up to some scrutiny, but scarcely seems enough to hang a whole movie on.

The ’science’ is frighteningly absent in places. We find that the humans of 700 years in the future have grown obese and unobservant of their surroundings, with all their cares handled by machinery. There is a throw away line about how living in a micro gravity climate may have led to atrophied muscles and bone structure, but it is unclear as to whether this is why everyone is too obese to even move themselves, or pure laziness is the cause. Indeed, when they do return to Earth, everyone can magically stand and walk around, implying they have been living at a higher gravity level. One of the tension building moments introduces us to large scale versions of WALL-E in the Axiom (the future humans spaceship home). Waste is simply ejected into the vacuum. This shows that they have not learned the lessons of the consumerist society that they were trying to escape. Worse, if all waste is being ejected rather than recycled, where is the raw material coming from to continue the consumerism in a closed ship?

Okay, so maybe I’m looking at this at the wrong level. My advice, turn your mind off before watching, and you will enjoy the movie. The lack of dialog will make this an easily understandable movie across languages, and it does touch the heartstrings. But worth a Hugo? Not in my book.

3/5