meh.

No.

btw, good review. I loved the film. What I got from it was not a slap-in-the-face environmental message, but a love story. Also, I was never bored. The film never seemed to drag or anything. Oh yeah, and kids (depending on their tastes and/or attention spans) will not be bored with Wall-E. Small kids usually get their laughs from visual gags rather than spoken dialogue (think Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry).

Oh, and Hunter, I dig your reviews. You always make me laugh. But…my eyes start to glaze over with that typical 21st century A.D.D. around paragraph five. :P

Wall-e’s existence mirrors this: he is relatively complacent in his daily work but somehow knows there’s more to life, and Eve’s arrival enlightens him in just the same way the plant enlightens the captain. For Wall-e, it’s love, purpose in life beyond function. For the humans, it’s purpose in life at all.

Or, then, the message is simply to live in a decently good fashion. Goin’ green is a byproduct.

“Subtle criticism of modern society”

This is what I will never understand about your argument, and you are not alone. How is the film’s Fattie Cruise seen as “subtle” and minor criticism?

These tubby people of the future can barely walk for chrissakes….every SINGLE last one of them. Their skeletons have devolved under their jelly. They have streaming video content piped before their eyes like a content trough, and they can switch fashions at the press of a button, while never getting up from their hover chairs or thinking. This is like calling the therapy in A Clockwork Orange subtle, or Idiocracy subtle, or the Ebola virus.

I’ve heard people discuss the plant like it’s a McGuffin. Just because it’s tossed around by the bots and is at the core of various hijinks doesn’t downplay what the plant represents: our last hope is to go green.

This is not my personal belief, and while Al Gore doesn’t make an appearance in place of Fred Willard (thankfully), it is a “message” and yes, it’s in a kid’s film. For kids, I feel that it was tastefully done, um, much more so than Captain Planet (remember that?). For the adults, it’s a deserved jab from the ex-hippies at Pixar.

The message is by no means the reason why the film is a 10/10. It’s neither a plus nor a minus. It’s simply a smart reflection of the times.

I just want to know how Wall-e escaped death from the pod. That had to be some slick McGyvering.

I’ve made a small edit to clarify what I meant by “hostage.” (Yes, that is a ridiculous thing to type.) Thanks. Willard’s character is nothing more than a pawn for BNL throughout the film, and when he first appears in the “sign off” scene specified above, it looks as if he is being pressured to make the speech by BNL reps off camera. However, when he finishes the speech he merely walks away in nice Willard fashion. I still feel this early set-up was purposeful.

All your reviews should start with ” If that twat…”

Side note, I dug your review.

but, I gotta say, I enjoy your bombastic reviews.

Obviously high when you wrote this one. . . . I love it how people are grabbing the subtle criticism of modern society and shooting up on it and telling us we’re going to hell as a planet, and that Wall-e is the awesomeist escapism fairy tale.