Disney’s Wall-e

I promised some comments on Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E after seeing it on Saturday with Max and my father-in-law.

The Plot:  The earth has been totally trashed by over-indulgent humans who have fallen prey to the parasitic onslaught of “Buy-in-Large”; a large conglomerate that is obviously intended to make us think of Walmart.  Wall-e is the last remaining robot that Buy-in-Large (called BnL in most of the movie) had created to try to help clean up all of the trash that humans had produced.  Wall-e is lonely and has a fascination with the movie Hello Dolly.  As depicted in one of Dolly’s love scenes, Wall-e longs to hold the hand of another robot.  His chance finally comes when Eve, a much more sophisticated robot, arrives on earth.  Wall-e falls in love with Eve.  Eve finds a small seedling (a sign of inhabitable life on earth) and she is whisked away back into outer space, but not before Wall-e becomes a stow-away.  When they arrives in space, we discover that there are still humans who have been evacuated from the earth on a huge space station created by BnL.  What ensues is a battle between the forces that want to return to earth (Wall-e, Eve, some renegade robots and the space station’s captain) and the forces that want to  keep humans in space (the robots that want to destroy the evidence of inhabitable life on earth).  In the end, the computers and robots are destroyed, the humans return to earth and Wall-e and Eve discover that they love one another.

On the whole, I found Wall-e to be far more entertaining than Pixar’s last two ventures (Cars and Ratatouille).  Both Cars and Ratatouille were incredibly predictable and overwhelmingly long!  The only predictable outcome in Wall-e was that he and Eve would most likely end up together.  The rest, however, only became predictable as the plot unfolded.  In other words, each plot movement in the movie foretold what was coming next, but did not give away the overall scope of the movie’s plot or climax.

The obvious environmental and capitalistic slam at Wal-mart and large corporations was way too obvious and could have easily overcome the movie’s story, but the Pixar folks made their point and then moved on.  It remains interesting to me that Disney; one of the world’s largest entertainment conglomerates (ABC, Disney Channel, Toon Disney, various movie production companies, etc) were making a slam at Walmart.  Disney holds as much, if not more, sway over the purchasing power of young children and tween-agers as Walmart.  I only need mention Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers; both of whom call the Disney company their home.

Fortunately the movie was not a rant about horrible humans destroying the earth and the savior robots having to f ix it.  In the end, it is a movie about the redemption of humanity.  When we first meet “humanity” in the movie, they are all overweight slobs who ride around all day on “moving recliners” watching some kind of cyber-land cross between laptops and televisions.  They can see only what is right in front of them on the screens.  When Wall-e accidentally knocks the screens off of two of these humans, they discover that there is a world beyond the cyber-fitted screens.  This is the beginning of humanity’s redemption in the movie.  In the end, humans help Wall-e, Eve and the renegade robots return humanity to earth where they again discover the joys of gardening and caring for the planet.

I really resonated with this theme in the movie.  America is now the fattest nation on the earth and the average parent spends 3 hours a day watching television and only 6 minutes a day playing with their children.  Children spend an average of 4 hours a day watching television and only 15 or so minutes outside.  When outside, they are scarecely able to entertain themselves.  Again, it was interesting that Disney, the King of kid entertainment, was taking a slam at our dependency on television and computer entertainment.

I left the movie convicted to spend more time with my family in the out of doors.  In fact, I’m going to  go ahead and build the gardening boxes in my back lawn that Sydney has been asking for and that I’ve been procrastinating on.

As Wall-e so aptly points out (even in spite of Disney/Pixar’s hypocrisy in the process), there is an amazing world around us to discover and enjoy.

A postscript form my father-in-law:  it was my father-in-law who wondered if Disney/Pixar realized that the robots that saved the humans and returned them to the earth were the creation of BnL; proving that big business and capitalism also have some very important benefits.  Just as it is taking Disney/Pixar, and entertainment giant, to  call our attention to our brainless use of televised and computerized entertainment.