Wall E

[poliphilo]

Wall E looks a lot like Johnny 5 from Batteries Not Included who was- in his turn - a robotic rip-off Spielberg's E.T. As a character he's basically Charlie Chaplin with the grit taken out. I liked the first half hour- which made me think of City Lights- sad little person woos lady who is obviously out of his league- but once we get into space we're into one of those endless, slapstick chase sequences that all Pixar movies seem to have to have, followed by the death and resurrection scene that every fantasy movie since E.T. has had to have. Wall E looks great, but what passes for imagination is really the deft and inventive juggling of pre-existing tropes. I have seen it called "dystopian" but it's too sentimental for that- and the moral- consume less and go to the gym- is straight out of the analects of Mickey Mouse. 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I can believe a lot of bad things about humankind, but not that we'd give up as easily as "we" do in the film. I found it very hard to believe in the deserted, rusting cities and the blobby people.

Like most SF stories Wall E's morality is distinctly conservative. It deplores the way we live now- dependent on machines, consuming junk- without addressing why this is so or offering any real alternative- except (and this is why I call it conservative) a return to the values of an agrarian, square-dancing past.