Movie Review: Wall-E

Written by: Eric Belsey

One of the joys of living with housemates is that they often bring cultural products to one’s attention that otherwise would have been missed. This was my experience with the first Men in Black movie; I dismissed it out of hand as some big-budget Hollywood blockbuster with little redeeming value. Then someone said, no, you have to see it. And I was pleasantly surprised by its creative humor.

Wall-E has followed the same trajectory for me. I saw the previews, and thought, oh, the mouse over at Disney/Pixar has made a cute little massive budget animated film about a lonely robot. Luckily, Cait bought a copy of the DVD, and while holding down the fort around here during the holidays, I popped it in our player.

Wall-E is slick, aesthetically intense and well-crafted, yet the movie carries an overt pro-farming and anti-consumerist message. Without revealing too much, basically the movie follows current trends in consumption to their logical conclusion: the death of the Earth’s capacity to sustain life. Humanity is choking on garbage, and so a spaceship is launched to preserve humankind in space while robots clean up our mess. Hijinks ensue.

Pay attention to the music when the credits roll; that’s Peter Gabriel, singing a great tune he wrote for the movie called Down to Earth (available on iTunes!) which extols the virtues of returning to a life lived closely with Nature. While there are times, as with any movie, when doubt must be suspended, I highly recommend this film for all ages.