Wall-e

The thing that really makes me sad about this film is that *someone* I know, quite probably someone whose aesthetic judgment I actually respect, will go see it and come back whining that it's an environmentalist diatribe against consumerism. Well, if you have any intention of being that person, I have one thing to say to you:

Idiot! Go to the back of the line!

Although elements that might, in other circumstances, point at consumerism and environmentalism are present in the movie, the movie is actually about virtue. It's an extremely complex theme for any sort of movie . . . in fact, I think it might have been a bit too complex for THIS movie, but damn if they didn't make an excellent run at it.

The basic premise of the movie is that humanity has left Earth in a fleet of automated luxury cruise ships while the planet is dug out from under an immense pile of garbage. Seven hundred years later, the humans are still living in space and the only thing still moving on the planet is a small robot named Wall-e, who is basically a self-propelled trash compactor. Surrounded by the detritus of so many lives, Wall-e has developed a personality.

Through a series of interesting events, Wall-e meets and develops feelings for another robot (Eve) and winds up blasting into space and landing on the flagship Axiom. (As an aside, is that a great name for a ship or what? From what I understand the main director in charge of Pixar is, if not precisely an Objectivist, someone with Objectivist tendencies.) There he discovers that the humans have all been turned into passive, shapeless blobs by the perfect luxury service. The presence of Wall-e and his devoted struggle for his values upsets the status quo and starts the humans back on the road to remembering that there's a Real Life out there somewhere and they're missing out on it.

It's a really good movie--stylistically it reminded me of the Fallout games just a little bit. It definitely shares some of the same "1950's apocalypse" tinge to it. There's amazingly little dialog, which is actually harder to do than too much.

Definitely worth seeing.