WALL-E

The Must-See-If-You-Care-About-Your-Life, Feel-Good-Unless-You-Have-No-Soul Movie of the Year!

Animated creatures have two purposes: either they are huge, scary, and garnished with so much visual detail that your eye instinctively searches for a vulnerable kill spot; or diminutive, helpless, and equipped with all the aggression of a sea anemone[1]. One of life's great injustices is the overwhelming and unquestioning favoritism of the public, and cuddly rusting robots are no exception. But despite the tremendous power of brainwashing displayed in former Pixar features, this time I'm not buying it.

WALL-E jettisons audiences on an involuntary tailspin into obligatory cooing and, yes, worship of this third dimensional false idol. Whereas audiences would generally get on their knees and beg for a fix of that brand-name cuteness, the thirst for the adorable nigh insatiable, this yet-to-viewer remains unswooning.

Exhibit A: If the personification of robots is a purported glitch, why does EVE display affectionate qualities found in the defunct version of itself? Indeed, the only palatable taste of EVE was the introductory warmongering path of destruction the egg timer-shaped costar unleashes on the title player. THAT'S the kind of future technology I'd like to see! But instead of the ideal, moving story that WALL-E could have followed[2] we are given R2-D2 in Love and told to shut up and like it.

Well, enjoy your facsimile of a creature feature, America. Pixar's humanity is sugarcoated, even in the cold, hollow gears of robots in space.



1. To be fair, those miniature tentacle monsters can get pretty fierce on you if you push them once too hard. Watch yourself.
2. "Old robot meets new robot, old robot loses new robot, old robot goes on cross-galactic search for new robot, old robot finds new robot, old robot starves for empathic connection with new robot only to be devastated by incompatibility, old robot considers suicide, old robot meets human, old robot makes connection and lives happily ever after, or finally dies while dreaming of the Blue Fairy and the music-emitting cranium of Jude Law."