Movie and Television Reviews

I had doubts about Wall-e after seeing it's lackluster trailer, but Wall-e continues Pixar's short tradition of wonderful and substantive children-adult celluloid wonderment (I don't know what they offer their employees, but Pixar seems to have a lock on the smartest people in Hollywood.).

Wall-e is a disposal unit condemned to pick up, compact, and stack trash on earth after its former inhabitants ruined it. While Wall-e toils on lifeless earth with only our discards and an indestructible cockroach to keep him company, a physically and intellectually (And spiritually, one can imagine.) degenerate humanity lounges on an immense space cruiser called the "Axiom." When Eve shows up, Wall-e uses the amorous techniques he learns from Hello Dolly to woo Eve who is initially hostile enough to fire a laser canon at him, but later succumbs to Wall-e's charms.

Hello, Dolly! Widescreen Edition

Eve's function is to search for and retrieve proof of sustainable life on earth to the Axiom. Wall-e makes a present of a living plant, and Eve immediately takes it to the Axiom. Heartbroken, Wall-e stows away on the Axiom and manages to get inside.

When the captain wants to go back to earth and recolonize, the ship's programming interferes. It seems that the last earthbound Buy n Large CEO, Shelby Forthright (Fred Willard is the only live action actor in the movie.) lost hope for earth and programmed a secret directive into the Axiom to prevent it from returning to earth.

The rest of Wall-e is Wall-e, the captain, and the now smitten Eve's attempt to defeat the secret directive.

The plot is fine and Wall-e moves at a nice pace. So powerful is the innocent relationship between Wall-e and Eve that one never questions why a single-purpose robot develops a personality or desires love. What makes Wall-e brilliant are the sophisticated sight gags and slapstick sequences reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin, Jerry Lewis, and other masters of the art. Seemingly simple things like Wall-e visually categorizing a spork between a fork and a spoon, a robot barely missing both a diving board and the water, and lightning striking Wall-e- twice make Wall-e a creative tour of force. A clean-up robot is a very funny rolling joke.

Politics/Message:

Leftists, liberals and other naives will like Wall-e for three reasons: One, the bad guy is a corporation; two, mankind devastates earth; and three, it's against consumerism. It seems to me, however, that conservatives can claim Wall-e for their own.

Who is more likely to bring about a conformist, propaganda-ridden society where people aren't free to make choices: a corporation or a government. The fact that the later isn't only more likely, but has actually occurred hundreds of times in human history is both obvious and the reason Wall-e couldn't substitute Buy n Large for a state. If it had, Wall-e wouldn't have been light puffery, but an honest-to-goodness horror movie.

In fact, isn't the controlled, "equal," leisure-filled society where everything is planned for its citizens, and both adults and children are saturated with "positive messages" more akin to an Obama/Western Europe utopia than a Wal-mart dystopia?

With which political leaning do you associate the captain's phrase, "We don't want to survive; we want to live," uttered when he realizes that there's more to life than comfort?

The story echoes the Noah story in the Bible except this time the world is destroyed for the sin of environmental carelessness instead of partying and disobeying God (unless you think environmental carelessness is a sin). On the other hand, the Axiom-dwellers aren't particularly worthy of survival.

Environmentalism is only a liberal philosophy when it crosses from a practical solution, to an article of faith.

Who's more opposed to materialism and consumption: the mostly materialistic (that only the physical is real) left or the spiritual and religious right?

No Teletubby androgyny here: Wall-e is obviously "male" and Eve is most certainly "female."

Americans are the only survivors of earth. Judging from their accents, they're all from Ohio.

Finally, I'm glad Pixar didn't use the ridiculous practice of promoting a cartoon by mentioning the actors who provided the characters' voices. I don't know whose voice's I heard and I don't care.

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