Robots in Love

Yesterday I had my second viewing of the movie WALL-E, and I liked it just as much as the first. There are some definite fundamental reasons I enjoyed it so much, and as I have a captive audience (not really), I suppose I can go into them.

There's something to be said about not cramming a children's movie full of dialogue and pretty colors. Simplicity is far underrated. Almost all the previews were, by contrast to WALL-E, incredibly awful and stereotypical talking live action animal/talking CG animated animal films. The chihuahua one in particular was off-the-charts terrible. WALL-E decided to eschew the celebrity-voiced pets and distracting musical numbers in favor of pretty much the most simple plot ever conceived, at least for the first forty-five minutes. There is basically no dialogue for the first third of the movie, but it's the better part in my opinion.

The best part of movies or television shows like this one is the fact that kids can derive laughter and entertainment from just seeing the robots interacting on the screen. The shoddy, outdated look of WALL-E and the sleek, Mac-like EVE provide enough contrast that kids can recognize their differences. Not only this, but context hints as simple as corporate branding can tell you a whole lot about what's going on and what went on when WALL-E started his seven-hundred-year cleanup job. Kids probably missed out on some of these aspects, but it provides a deeper plot than just robots trotting around. And, unlike a lot of older Disney movies and movies by Disney today without PIXAR's involvement, it has humor that pretty much everyone can find funny. I'm not saying that WALL-E with its "robot falls down, robot gets crushed by shopping carts after comically running away" is New Yorker material here, but it made me laugh.

The only thing I could see wrong with it is the fact that it gets a little overtly preachy. Now don't get me wrong, I like the message and enjoy that they're gutsy enough to throw it in there, but the overtness could turn people off. Subtlety holds a lot of value when you're trying to convince someone of something; if you're too direct, you can seem a little too controlling. WALL-E almost makes it under this bar, but not quite. Regardless, the "take care of Earth" message is a good one to teach kids if you don't want their future to be filled with skyscrapers made of rotting garbage.