A Colbert Christmas and WALL-E

Stocking Stuffers: The Disney-Pixar wonder Wall-E (above) and A Colbert Christmas (right) are now on video shelves.

The film opens about 800 years from now
on Earth, which resembles a post-apocalyptic wasteland devoid of human
survivors. We learn what happened to the population later; in the
meantime, however, viewers witness the solitary existence of WALL-E, a
solar-powered trash compactor who turns out to be the planet’s
custodial caretaker, as it compresses abandoned bric-a-brac into
squares of junk, all arranged neatly in looming piles. Aside from a
Jiminy Cricket-styled cockroach that feeds off old Twinkies (the joke
is that it’s the only food that can last centuries past its expiration
date), WALL-E dutifully forges ahead, albeit in a slapstick manner that
always keeps the kids engaged, like figuring out geegaws like
brassieres and paddle balls. But when a gigantic spaceship drops off
EVE, a sleek trigger-happy interloper with a cute giggle, the lonely
WALL-E becomes enchanted by this potential new friend. When she soon
blasts off after completing her objective, the love-smitten WALL-E
follows EVE to her destination, yet the robot also gets reconnected to
the earthlings’ past.

WALL-E and EVE are acronyms—which I
gleaned from the press kit, not the movie—that stand for Waste
Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class and Extraterrestrial Vegetation
Evaluator, respectively, with the latter robot hinting at this movie’s
environmental message. Consumerism takes its lumps as well, as the
hologram image of Fred Willard as a mega-conglomerate CEO, the only
actual human we see, extols the virtues of his B’N’L (as in
Buy’N’Large) global empire, home of ultrastores, skyscrapers and
never-ending comfort foods that can be straw-sucked from cups.
(Willard, who earned a cult following as a clueless, Ed McMahon-styled
sidekick to Martin Mull in Fernwood 2-Night 30 years ago, is as funny as ever, thank goodness.) 

Beyond the obvious satire, there’s also
a host of gags that cross-reference a goodly amount of pop-culture
sources, everything from Modern Times to Short Circuit, and from Titanic to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s man-vs.-machine showdown—and let’s not forget Sigourney Weaver, our queen of outer space from the Alien
flicks, as the voice of a spacecraft’s computer. Yet director Stanton
squeezes out plenty of Chaplinesque comedy from the premise as well as
his pliable sad-sack lead; Stanton even builds upon previous gags
during the end credits’ Pixar logo to provide just one example of the
company’s scrupulous senses of story structure and organic humor.
Concocting recognizable human traits such as sympathy and awe from
mechanical devices is never an easy task, yet from the moment that
WALL-E uses an old hubcap as a kind of straw boater to mimic
choreographed dance moves taken from a long-forgotten Hollywood
production number (actually, director Gene Kelly’s splashy musical Hello, Dolly!), you quickly get the idea that WALL-E is dizzyingly high-tech on the outside and yet poignantly old-school at its emotional core. 

Walt Disney Home Entertainment has
issued WALL-E in several DVD releases, with the movie itself
letterboxed at 2.39:1 ratio, a widescreen feast that earns repeated
viewings just to savor all the intricate details. The single disc
boasts commentary by Stanton for the feature and a pair of deleted
scenes that total about 10 minutes. 

Also represented is the five-minute theatrical short Presto,
director Doug Sweetland’s funfest about a hungry rabbit who turns the
tables with a magician’s top hat (Bullwinkle creator Jay Ward is
credited as an associate producer); the eight-minute spinoff short BURN-E,
which is best viewed after the main feature, since it concerns the
parallel misadventures of a comic-relief supporting character, in what
seems like a Pixar variation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; and the 19-minute vignette Animation Sound Design: Building Worlds from the Sound Up,
a profile of Burtt’s many contributions. The best moments here include
Burtt creating EVE’s zap-gun effects with a Slinky tethered from a
ladder and scenes of Burtt admiring the long-ago sound-effects methods
employed for old Disney cartoons; as Burtt plays with the likes of
screen-door contraptions and sheet metal used for thunderous sounds,
he’s like a kid happily lost in a candy store. 

Those who spring for the triple-disc
version will receive the aforementioned disc as well as a digital copy
that can be downloaded to laptops or other portable configurations. A
second bonus disc is split into two categories of extras titled “Humans
for Film Fans” and “Robots for Families.” The latter grouping is on the
skimpy side, with about five minutes of blackout sight gags, an
interactive storybook and descriptions of 28 robots that turn up in the
movie. The “Humans” portion features six behind-the-scenes pieces
totaling about 50 minutes, 13 minutes of more deleted scenes and nine
minutes of Buy’N’Large shorts, some narrated by Fred Willard, that
satirically kid the corporation’s “consumer solutions.” 

There’s also the 89-minute documentary The Pixar Story,
narrated by Stacy Keach and created by Leslie Iwerks, whose granddaddy
Ub Iwerks was an animator at Disney. While the movie is a tad on the
fawning side, and it even downplays the acrimony behind the seismic
battle between Pixar and former Disney head Michael Eisner (for a
juicier study of that issue, read David A. Price’s recent book The Pixar Touch
from Alfred A. Knopf), there’s still plenty of details and even home
movies that explain the iconic talents who built this studio one
computer bite at a time.  

There’s one sizable drawback to this
latest Disney-Pixar DVD triumph: The cardboard packaging, perhaps a sop
to green-minded initiatives, crams the discs into an unwieldy
contraption that will surely rip and fray once consumers start
wrestling with it. Good luck! 

A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! (Comedy Central; 45 minutes; unrated; 2008).
Just a quick note about Stephen Colbert’s funny holiday TV special,
which spoofs long-ago boob-tube egg nogs hosted by the once-cardiganed
likes of Perry Como or Andy Williams. Colbert, the mock egotistical
conservative mouthpiece of The Colbert Report, takes aim at the
season’s daffier showcases of yesteryear, the inadvertently strange
specials such as the teaming of Bing Crosby with David Bowie or Judy
Garland hanging out with her children, as well as the deliberate
Pee-wee Herman send-up. The new plot is preposterous—Colbert can’t make
a taping because his bear nemesis won’t let him out of the star’s
mountainside retreat—but guest stars still manage to shoehorn their way
in, as Toby Keith, Feist and Willie Nelson warble goofy new songs
written by Cry-Baby composers David Javerbaum and Adam
Schlesinger. John Legend has the best number, a sex-drenched ode to
“Nutmeg,” while Jon Stewart deadpans his way through the meaning of
Hannukah and Elvis Costello’s inspired comedy seems straight out of a
Beatles movie directed by Richard Lester.  

Comedy Central repeats this special on
Tuesday, Nov. 25, 10 p.m.; Wednesday, Nov. 26, 12 a.m.; Thursday, Nov.
27, 11:30 p.m.; and Friday, Nov. 28, 3 p.m. And in the greatest plug of
all, A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! is also
available on DVD from Paramount/Comedy Central Home Entertainment, with
proceeds to benefit Feeding America. Extras include the option of
watching with or without live-audience laughter (the sweetening feels a
bit overdone), a trio of alternate endings, a 25-day video advent
calendar and 19 minutes of a burning yule log, with some surprise tomes
tossed in at the midway point.

—Bill DeLapp