Okay, Wall-E Was Pretty Great

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


mojo-photo-walle2.jpgPixar’s latest animated romp Wall-E beat out Angelina Jolie as superhero assassin-recruiter-whatever flick Wanted to collect over 63 million bucks into its cute little trash-compactor belly this weekend, and after feeling a bit guilty for posting a skeptical review before even seeing it, I escaped the gay pride crowds by heading for a Saturday night showing. While I’m not really qualified to agree or disagree with the Chicago Tribune‘s claim that this is the “best American studio film this year,” I will say it was really quite good, probably the best Pixar film yet, but not without its flaws.

The inconsistent anthropomorphism that annoyed and troubled me in Finding Nemo is far more tolerable here: while it’s silly to think a trash-compactor robot would be granted such an elaborate emotion chip and that a cockroach could take orders, they’re both smart enough to be the last of their kind, and in 700 years, who knows what could happen? Plus there are lots of winking details: the portaits of the ship’s captains throughout the years devolve not only from robust to flabby, but also from photo-realistic to cartoonish, in a cute nod to Scott McCloud’s theories of how comics use simplification to create a language of symbols. Unfortunately, my previous criticism of the excessive detail of computer-animated films applies here as well: there’s often just too much going on, extra bits that distract you from the task at hand. It’s understandable, since such elaborate productions require extreme specialization, and if you have a team of animators spending three years working on a 7-second scene of a goofy malfunctioning umbrella robot, that robot will probably be really cool and funny and its scene will whip by far too quickly, leaving you vaguely unsatisfied, wishing the movie could slow down a little and let you look at all the stuff.

Some reviews were too critical: Salon.com was in awe of the opening and frustrated with the ending, claiming that the film shifted tone too abruptly between acts, but I didn’t see that at all. While the underlying concept of a trash-covered dead Earth is pretty grim, for sure, even the first 40 wordless minutes are mostly played for laughs, or at least for “awwws,” with our robot lead scooting around adorably. Director Andrew Stanton has downplayed the film’s political side, but really, it’s right there front and center: the perennially awesome Fred Willard, as some sort of corporate-CEO-slash-president-of-Earth, uses the obvious Bushism “stay the course” when it’s clear things are falling apart, although me and my date were the only ones who laughed at that in our audience. Despite the direct criticisms of our current political muddle and consumerist excesses, Wall-E is always a comedy, and I’d honestly expected it to be a little darker. Remember the old Mel Brooks remake of To Be or Not to Be, where madcap silliness is set against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Warsaw? This is like that, only even lighter, and for kids, of course. In both films, the unimaginable loss is offscreen, and we get to enjoy an unlikely happy ending, although things here seem to get wrapped up a little too easily. This is tempered by the brilliant coda that runs alongside the credits: an epilogue utilizing styles from the history of human visual expression and a retelling of the movie’s plot using classic video game-style graphics.

Sure, the question of whether a Disney product can authentically criticize consumerist culture, lazy viewers, and wasted resources may trouble some viewers, but I dunno; works of art distributed by major conglomerates have criticized those same conglomerates for a long time. At the very least, it brings up interesting issues for discussion; something that Beverly Hills Chihuahua, whose stultifying, this-cannot-be-real preview seemed to exemplify the trash culture Wall-E was criticizing, can’t even approach. Where the line is between “Chihuahuas Gone Wild” and apparently worthy artifacts of humanity’s existence like Hello, Dolly, I’m not sure, but it’s reassuring to know that in 700 years, a robot will have figured it out.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate