WALL-E

Possible-Spolier Alert

Just taking a break from the planets series to review Disney and Pixar's WALL-E.

Being a huge Pixar fan, I went to see WALL-E with high expectations. After all, this is the ninth film from a production company that's been on an unbroken streak of success since the release of Toy Story in 1995. Thirteen years later Pixar is still at the top of their game with WALL-E.

This latest star in the Pixar galaxy follows the adventures of the titular trash-compacting robot. He represents the last vestige of an attempt to clean up the massive amounts of trash that have rendered Earth unsuitable for life (save for Wall-E 's pet cockroach). It's been 700 years since the humans left their shamelessly abused home planet; in the meantime, Wall-E has developed a personality. Like a magpie, he squirrels away any bits of "trash" that he deems valuable (he tosses a diamond ring in favor of the velvet box it came in).

Wall-E 's loneliness is expressed through his fascination with a love scene from his old VHS recording of Hello, Dolly!. He longs to hold hands with someone. That someone arrives on Earth in the form of Eve, a sleek, egg-shaped probe droid sent to check the planet for signs of life. It's love at first sight for Wall-E.

About thirty minutes into the film the adventure officially, and literally, takes off when Wall-E stows away on the spaceship that has returned for Eve. She's carrying a tiny, fragile plant specimen that Wall-E gave her and it will end up being the key to returning life to Earth. Once on board the Axiom, an intergalactic luxury liner housing the remnants of humanity, Wall-E 's hapless efforts to reunite with Eve sets off a chain of events that jolts the rotund, infantile, technology-dependant humans to fulfill their original purpose as the caretakers of Earth.

I didn't expect WALL-E to be as successful as the Pixar chef-d'oeuvre Finding Nemo nor did I find its message as poignant as that of Ratatouille; however, there is a beauty about WALL-E that still sets it high above the average family entertainment.

Like other Pixar offerings, this film pushes the envelope, not in terms of crudeness, but in terms of subject, characters, and intelligence. With hardly any dialogue, WALL-E plays like a tribute to the silent films from the early days of cinema, particularly the comedy of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton. Imagine, in an age where kids can't sit still for five seconds, making your target audience sit though a half-hour exposition that takes its time developing a lone protagonist who can't utter more that a handful of words. Daring indeed. It's refreshing to see kids' films that expect more from their viewers than a few giggles at a bodily function joke.

WALL-E sends an intriguing message about what it means to be human. It celebrates humanity's potential for creativity, resourcefulness, playfulness, and love. At the same time, it warns us against some of our vices: gluttony, laziness, indifference, and apathy. While the humans in the movie represent an unsatisfactory future, Wall-E provides a contrast. He yearns for the privileges of humanity, namely relationships. He shows curiosity and wonderment (I can't forget the scene where he touches Saturn's rings). He represents what we can, and should, be. In the end, he inspires the humans he interacts with to reach for their full potential.

From a Christian perspective, it seems that the humans in WALL-E have flouted the tasks that God gave them in Eden: to rule over the earth and to marry and procreate. Wall-E, both through his reverence for creations (God-made and manmade) and his relationship with Eve, reiterates the fundamental goodness of those mandates.