Northern Michigan Notes
WALL-E: I wanna hold your hand
By Kahty English
Jul 9, 2008, 17:37

Anyone who is looking for a good summer flick might try the Pixar film WALL-E.   I won't bore you with my own take on it, seeing as Roger Ebert gives his very concise views and opinions on this film.

Let me say, though, that anyone could see this film and enjoy it on many levels. 

There isn't any trendy dialogue to keep up with. In fact, until about the middle of the movie, about the only words and phrases the audience will hear are "WALL-E" and "EVA" and "Directive," and an occasional commercial which gives some background information.

The scenery is somewhat drab and disturbing, a veritable sea scape of trash and abandoned buildings.  But we don't mind because we're too interested in what WALL-E is going to do next. 

One can view the film strictly for the story of WALL-E meeting EVA, and how they connect to each other and how WALL-E starts this domino effect that gets the humans to reconnect to one another.

One can view the film as a tale of warning of what our world will become if we don't start recycling and quit promoting the "BUY and LARGE" (buy and "enlarge"?) mode of thinking.  Buy 'n' Large is the name of the mega-stores that keep popping up throughout WALL-E's world.

The irony shouldn't be lost, either, as we get our glimpse of humans in this film.  My family and I are eating our super-tubs of buttered popcorn and drinking our super-size drinks.  Why? Because to purchase two small drinks and two small popcorns actually costs more than to purchase the next size up.  Why? Because movie theatres make no money on anything but concessions. Or so I'm told. But that's another story.

What appears on the screen is a busy highway with a mixture of robots and red, union-suited, morbidly obese humans floating down the highway on their puffy recliner chairs, each with his or her own screen for phone calls or announcements from the space ship captain. The screen is just inches from each face, and each person has the beverage or food of choice in hand.  They float blissfully on down this automated highway and thus avoiding all traffic accidents due to their inattention, completely unaware of anyone else's existence, even when the person they're speaking to on their screen is floating right alongside them.

It's a wonder there is even a nursery on board this ship because given the state of affairs between the humans, I'm wondering how any of them had the inclination or interest to reproduce.

Some may find the subtextual messages a bit preachy.  Others may find the themes of connecting in meaningful ways to be just the thing. Oddly enough, WALL-E the robot  wants what he sees in his movie of dancing and singing humans--contact with another like himself, someone to hold his hand.  Don't wonder too much how a robot comes to have emotions or a need for physical contact.  That isn't the point of the film.

Whatever message you get from WALL-E, there is lots of food for thought.  And it's ok to super-size that!