Review: Wall*e

One of the amazing things about Pixar is that they deliberately seem to seek a challenge. Who would want to see a film, however brilliant, about a fish looking for his son? A rat chef? Or, in their latest venture, a trash-collecting robot who can't even talk?

Well, I did, and the odds are you will too.

There are too many reviews of Wall*e out for me to detail the plot, but I'll mention a few things I think others have missed.

First, one of the few flaws of the plot is that I think I liked the dystopian world of the shiny BuyNLarge ship better than the dystopian, trash-strewn, worn out earth. Why would you want to leave the glittering ship for that?

Second, Andrew Stanton said the film wasn't meant to be political, even though it was about BuyNLarge Corporation taking over the world. I think his critique of our society is much more about lifestyle choices like getting fat and becoming a sedentary nation of TV watchers and computer users. The sequences where people on the ship were made to ignore the telescreen and see each other were great. "Hey, I didn't even realize this ship had a pool!" was a great line.

BuyNLarge is an obvioius Wal*Mart parody although I wonder if we would ever trust Wal*Mart to take over space exploration and public transport.

It's amusing that even though we have a dystopian future where things don't quite work out as planned, once we are in the ship all the technology works flawlessly.

No question, Pixar has created a brilliant, hilarious hit with heart, again. Go see it!

Filed under: walle, buynlarge, dystopia, and pixar