WALL-E

Note: Possible spoilers may be written into this review/exploration. If you haven't seen the movie and want to experience its entire emotional impact, see it first, then read this.

After coming home Friday night, I convinced my family to see WALL-E with me. I know it looks like a children's movie, and in some respects, it is. However, as someone (whom I can't currently recall) put it, it is the most delightfully seditious movie aimed at children I have ever seen. On its face, it's a robotic love-story set on post-apocalyptic Planet Earth. However, the deviation comes early on, as you quickly realize that the apocalypse is man-made, and as we zoom in on the Manhatten skyline, we soon find skyscrapers made of trash, and that the entire city used to be run by a major conglomerate called BuyN'Large.

This movie is not subtle; the messages are designed so kids get it. The conglomerate is obviously reminiscent of the Wal-Marts of the world, who run the world like governments, and the portrayal of humanity as fat, lazy, and blissfully unaware of each other and the world around them seems like a comic version of the forseeable future (or at least, that's what the movie is trying to tell us). "I didn't know we had a pool!" one cries out after being shocked from her stupor by WALL-E's bumbling. Humanity doesn't even have to stand and walk; they float around on chairs, being served hand and foot by a team of robots designed to take care of their every bidding, and they communicate through computer screens that are perpetually floating in front of them. We later learn they don't even have physical contact with each other (although there are babies... go figure).

As a foil to the entirety of humanity, WALL-E is intensely curious and lonely, even as a robot. He collects things and uses our trash to create new skyscrapers (which I found... interesting; he takes our trash, things we don't want, and turns them into structures which we now revere. There's a quiet irony in that.). He represents humanity in its infancy, when the world was still bound in mystery. Compare that to the humanity that's later portrayed, more bound up in their own lives than the world around them, and it seems only fitting that WALL-E's appearance on their ship should so thoroughly disrupt their lives, from the big task of proving there is life on earth, to the rather small action of knocking a person off their chair and giving them a moment of awareness of the world around them (attending meditation classes, there was a bit of comparison between WALL-E and a Buddha of sorts, shocking people out of their "slumber," including 40 min of monk-like silence to open the movie).

Also, there's the existence of BuyN'Large, which as I stated before, runs the world like a government. In fact, no government is ever mentioned in the story; it is only this large conglomerate that provides everything. *NOTE: MAJOR SPOILER* It's amusing to note that the conspiracy that ends up preventing humanity's return to earth is engineered by the BuyN'Large CEO, who tells us that Earth has become inhospitable to life and that they can't return, duping the people into going on a "long cruise" in space. These are the types of conspiracies normally attributed to governments, and by attributing it to a company, the movie does a great job of quickly illustrating the kinds of power corporations may be gaining, as they concentrate more wealth in the hands of fewer people and superceding the power of our governments to represent their people. When a coporation engineers a conspiracy even remotely of this sort, we should all be very worried.

The movie is entertaining, even if you don't take in any of these deeper meanings. The characters are well-done, especially WALL-E and his love interest, EVE. Ultimately, the movie is an in-your-face wake-up call of what's going to happen to our planet if we don't start doing anything about it. It's a blunt social commentary, cutely wrapped up in a children's movie.