DVD reviews: WALL.E | Mamma Mia!

Published on Friday 21 November 2008 14:25

WALL.E (U) £21.99 Director: Andrew Stanton Running time: 95 minu ****

As close to animation heaven as you'd imagine it's possible to get, this utterly charming tale is what the cinema experience was made for. Which should come as no surprise when you note that the crew behind it have been involved in the rise to animation supremacy of Pixar studios, having produced most things from Toy Story to A Bug's Life.

Here, however, we are thrown into another universe as childlike wonder and technical expertise are combined in a dystopian tale which sends a little robot into space in order to find the path forward for humankind.

Wall.E is a robot. In fact, he is the last robot on Earth, left to busy himself crunching the waste humanity left behind before it zipped off into the intergalactic sunset and abandoned Planet Earth with no natural life on which to rely. That is until Eve, a space pod, is sent down in search of hope, and falls for the charms of the little robot.

Attention to detail within Wall.E's domain is exquisite, and drives the humour and sentimentality of the film throughout, but this is a big film visually and ethically as it succeeds in preaching a moral message arguably more directly than An Inconvenient Truth ever could.

MAMMA MIA! (PG) 21.99

Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Running time: 105 minutes

***

How could it possibly go wrong? Take the music of one of the most popular musical acts of the last 20 years, which has already been adapted into a stage show of worldwide success, and throw in the acting skills of Meryl Streep, Julie Walters and Pierce Brosnan. Mamma Mia! on film was really just a foregone conclusion, except something in its transition into the glossy, edited-down world of cinema saw its magic slightly diluted.

It can't all be laid at the feet of Brosnan, who, as one of the potential estranged fathers to Streep's daughter, gives a little too much in the singing stakes, but there's arguably more cheese on show here than in a Mellis shop window.

In truth, however, there is very little damage that can be done to a machine so slickly successful as Abbamania, and, as with the best stag and hen parties, the trick is just to join in the fun. No, they shouldn't have squeezed into those lycra suits and arguably Streep made one of the oddest role choices of her career in playing the hippy mother, but if this was a competition for camp exuberance and feelgood factor, then this film dances away into the disco-soundtracked sunset with full marks.