Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
The
Soul in the Trash Compactor
(WALL-E, 7/7/08)
By Nicholas Nicastro
Like
many of Pixar Studios' other creations (Toy Story, Finding Nemo,
The Incredibles), WALL-E looks like the kind of popular and
critical hit that makes even the gentlest quibble seem petty. No argument
here over whether the cheers are deserved—WALL-E is indeed
that rare piece of entertainment that will keep a child happy without
tempting parents to blow their brains out with boredom. It's imaginative,
funny, and (mostly) unobjectionable. But that doesn't mean it's the
best thing since the invention of Ti-Vo.
As you may have heard, WALL-E is
an autonomous trash-compactor living 700 years in the future. By that
time, the earth is such a toxic scrap heap that all the humans have
abandoned it for a cushy resort in outer space. WALL-E's job is to collect
the whole planet's-worth of garbage and process it for collection at
some unspecified future date. Mostly, our robot just fights boredom,
poking around the detritus, puzzling over the uses of this or that remote
control or grungy piece of lingerie. The implication, we suppose, is
that WALL-E's humanity has been spurred by a menial, soul-destroying
job—surely a reassuring prospect for America's youth this graduation
season.
Things change with the arrival of
EVE. With the sleek, spare look of something designed by Apple, she's
been sent by the humans to scout for life. WALL-E is smitten, of course,
which raises some challenges because EVE is a babe with an itchy trigger
finger. Their ensuing adventure takes them to the heights of robot love,
as well as to the Axiom, a giant space station where the humans have
devolved into obese couch-potatoes. (It's one of the peculiar conceits
of WALL-E that humans need futuristic technology to become obese
couch-potatoes.)
Now it's often been said that the
success of Pixar's computer animated features is subversive to old Hollywood,
because they don't have the faces of movie stars in them, yet they are
profitable on a Spielbergian scale. But this is only half-correct. Pixar
(which is now owned by Disney) may not rely on star-power, but the appeal
of their movies has everything to do with the old-fashioned virtues
of a solid script and good characterizations. In short, they prove that
yes, even in the age of CGI, the guy (or gal) with the word processor
still lies at the foundation of profitable moviemaking.
With its gaudily high hit-to-miss
ratio at the box office, the studio appears to have its mix of cuteness
and hipness down to a science. For the kiddies, what can be more appealing
than a curious, goggle-eyed robot with a taste for collecting interesting
pieces of junk? (It was no accident that WALL-E ingests garbage directly
into a trap-door in his "stomach"—giving him a big set
of jaws might have been too threatening.) Parents, meanwhile, are treated
to a feast of cultural references, including WALL-E's love for an old
VHS of Hello, Dolly! and winking references to classics like
2001, Blade Runner, and Titanic. Pixar's writers (here,
Andrew Stanton) have gotten so good at this they make it look almost
too easy. It's become the Roger Federer of pop animation.
Not that WALL-E is perfect
for all ages. As the parent of a six year-old, it's a constant source
of puzzlement why movies with intense action-sequences and many, many
loud explosions receive G ratings. My daughter watched half of it with
fingers clasped tightly over her eyes. But at least she came out with
a smile on her face.
©2008 Nicholas Nicastro
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