Grace and I took her sister to see Pixar's latest last night, and I have to say, O Reader: if you haven't gone and seen it, go and see it. For my money, it's probably the best Pixar film yet, and I wonder if it would be all that hyperbolic to say that it will hold that top spot in my mind for a goodly while. It's rare enough to find a movie that is genuinely uplifting at a spiritual level, especially in the sci-fi/action genre of film (BSG often fits the bill, although it is a TV series rather than a motion picture), but Wall-E delivers that and more.

Don't be fooled into thinking this is a kid's movie, either; WALL-E is age-independent. Because the characters are primarily robots (humans appear as well, but only in a supporting role), there is little in the way of dialogue — most of the comedy is physical/scenario-driven in nature, and will appeal equally to the young and the old (in fact, I suspect adults may enjoy it more than kids, in the same way that Looney Tunes are way more funny to me now than they ever were when I was ten).

It would also make for one heck of a date movie; I don't think I let go of Grace's hand for more than five minutes in total during the entire length of the movie. Not only is WALL-E a well-executed sci-fi story with equal parts comedy and well-paced action sequences, it is also a very romantic movie, and the budding relationship that emerges between EVE and WALL-E is amazing for its depth, the sweetness that characterizes it, its innocence, and how very real it feels, right down to how WALL-E makes a point of proudly showing EVE just some of the many trinkets "he" has collected in his 700 years of garbage compaction. Gents, I think (hope!) we can all recognize that little ritual?

(I remember showing Grace some of the many things — model planes, Lego constructs, books — I had collected when first we met.)

Finally, don't but into the manufactured controversy that this is basically just with a cute face. Yes, it does depict a spoiled and desolate Earth, and yes, there is an environmental message at its core. But it ultimately is, I think, a message about stewardship of the Earth (c.f. Genesis 1:28-31), about the need for humanity to use (not abuse) Nature and the many resources of the world, and to make effective and responsible use of the technology at hand…in such a way that both humanity and Nature benefit. The message in WALL-E's narrative is very much in favour of human development and the individual spirit, and praises the virtues of "get your hands dirty"-****hard work.

Now, after the jump, we'll get into greater detail. If you don't want spoilers, O Reader, do skip this next part.

The backstory of WALL-E is that Earth is too polluted to sustain life (or so it is thought), having been overrun with garbage. It might be easy to mistake this as just another "go green" message, but Pixar and writer/director Andrew Stanton doesn't go there. Instead, he presents a world that appears to have fallen into rule by a form of "soft" corporate fascism, in which a megacorporation (Buy N' Large) had taken over pretty much every aspect of society, including government. Indeed, even the "liners" that humanity used to escape the planet were built and branded by "BNL". It's basically as though Wal-Mart ran the world, with food services outsourced to McDonald's.

If anything, WALL-E is less a commentary on environmentalism as it is on overdependency and perpetual adolescence, which the film's director has noted:

…when I started outlining humanity in the story, I asked myself: What if everything you needed to survive — health care, food — was taken care of and you had nothing but a perpetual vacation to fill your time? What if the result of all that convenience was that all your relationships became indirect — nobody's reaching out to each other? A lot of people have suggested that I was making a comment on obesity. But that wasn't it, I was trying to make humanity big babies because there was no reason for them to grow up anymore.

Initially, according to the story, humanity evacuated Earth as part of a five year plan (would it be too much to read a subtle jab at Soviet economic policy into that?) to clean the place up again. Unbeknownst to the human captains of the various BNL starliners, however, was a second directive given shortly after the initial exodus, direct from the President (both of BNL and, presumably, the world) to the autopilot computers of said starliners. Directive A113 stipulated that Earth was too toxic to ever sustain life again; no return was to be attempted or allowed.

The initial clean-up plan involved leaving a quantity (presumably hundreds, if not thousands) of robots behind to compact and organize the garbage, presumably so that it could be disposed of in an orderly manner later on. The WALL-E robots (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth ****, which seem to be a cross between Number Five and a turtle, went about their task, and appear to have constructed massive skyscrapers of neatly compacted cubes of garbage. However, as is made apparent in a scene of WALL-E's daily trip home, all the other robots seem to have failed for various reasons. WALL-E makes a point of salvaging what parts he can from these other robots, replacing his treads in one subtly comic scene.

WALL-E has also befriended a small cockroach, which he treats with care and attention, and which appears to follow instructions given to it by WALL-E. As he goes about his daily task (which Rod Dreher calls "Sisyphean" in nature), WALL-E also collects trinkets — Zippo lighters, lightbulbs, bobble-head dolls, bubble wrap, a Rubik's Cube, and anything else that catches his eye. These he stores in an old Coleman cooler that he carts around with him on his garbage compacting excursions. For seven hundred years, he has been the sole archivist of humanity's history on Earth, if unwittingly. This is especially interesting when one considers, as Dreher also noted, that WALL-E's programming likely did not include the ability to differentiate between trash and treasure.

Somewhere along the line, his adaptive programming became something more, for WALL-E is perhaps one of the most "human" characters Pixar has ever introduced to us. Possessed of an insatiable curiosity and a humble desire to serve, WALL-E seems to treat every day with the same sense of ordered purpose, and also treats every trinket he finds with a sense of child-like wonder. Above all, he is a genuine innocent…and yet he understands that in some way, he's missing something. In some fundamentally irrational way, he understands that there is something higher than his programming and his "directive" (a theme in the movie). In repeatedly watching an old video tape of Hello Dolly, he sees in the characters therein glimpses of love (expressed especially in the theme of holding hands), and something inside him desires to love as well.

Naturally, then, WALL-E is all but smitten when EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) arrives on a sleek, gleaming space ship. Snow-white and sleek "her"self, she can perhaps be likened to the dove sent out from the Ark. That said, she seems to take delight in plasma-blasting everything that twitches. In spite of this, WALL-E follows her around as she follows her own directive — to search for evidence of plant life on Earth.

As it happens, WALL-E — in the course of his daily duties — has found a plant, which he keeps in an old work boot (a none-too-subtle commentary on the life-giving value of honest work, methinks). After a few mis-steps in his attempts to attract EVE's affections, WALL-E ends up giving shelter to her during a dust storm. In his "home" (which appears to be some kind of heavy industrial vehicle) atop a broken bridge, he proudly shows her his collection of trinkets, and then shows her the plant…which throws everything into a tailspin as EVE's programming takes over. She collects the plant, stuffing it into a storage compartment in herself, and then powers down into a beacon-transmitting mode. WALL-E, distraught, spends an uncertain length of time (several seasons, by the montage) shepherding EVE around his world, protecting her from the elements and never letting her out of his sight in the hopes that she might wake again and intrude once more upon his solitude.

Finally, dejected, he resumes working, and it is then that the space ship returns to collect EVE. After warning his cockroach pet (how the heck did Pixar manage to make a realistically-modeled cockroach seem cute?) to stay put, he clambers up the side of the rapidly-ascending ship, and gets taken on a ride through space to the Axiom — the flagship starliner of the BNL fleet.

Axiom is people with humans, yes, and in various advertisments that are shown prior to the ship's actual revelation it seems to be a cruise liner. Manicured, statuesque humans in those commercials are shown enjoying many different ameneties, and it would seem that every convenience is provided for. And for every man and women, a hover-chair, to allow for speedy conveyance between destinations. And perhaps, for the five year cleanup plan that had intially been envisioned by BNL, Axiom and her sister ships might have done well. But 700 years and many generations of "all expenses paid" resort life has been almost ruinous to humanity, who are now universally obese (it is hinted, in the movie, that this is as much a function of life in low gravity as it is of diet and inactivity) and permanently plugged in to the various ameneties of their hover chairs (which appear to include, among other things, holographic instant messaging and holographic fashion layers which can be projected onto the base clothing that is worn. There is a short, heartbreaking scene in which portraits of the various captains of the Axiom are shown arrayed next to each other on the wall. The first entrant on the list is trim, but subsequent officers get progressively pudgier.

Rod Dreher puts it well:

They have been thoroughly infantilized — they look like overgrown babies — and have grown completely dependent on the BNL Corporation, the massive company that, it appears, became the government back on Earth, and whose priorities — sell crap to consumers, and make them totally dependent on their own desires — led to the catastrophe on Earth. BNL is totalitarian, but it's the softest totalitarianism imaginable: they've taken over by fulfilling every desire of the populace, a populace that (apparently) came to think of politics as chiefly a matter of ordering the polis around the telos of satisfying human desires.

Mind you, this is [ostensibly -- Ken] a kid's movie.

WALL-E innocently pursues EVE (still deactivated) through the ship, causing all manner of commotion along the way. Notably, some of his actions prompt other robots in this sterile, cruise-liner world to part company with protocol. Our loveable protagonist teaches a door-warden robot to wave in greeting, and inspires a cleaning bot named MO (Microbe Obliterator) to jump off its programmed (and illuminated) travel path in the cause of cleaning up the dirt trail that WALL-E leaves behind him wherever he goes. Seven hundred years of toil has furnished him with a plentiful supply of "foreign contaminants", the things which MO is programmed to relentlessly hunt down and scrub away.

There is a subtly disturbing element to the scenes that flash by during this pursuit. Hallways are full of robots and obese, chair-bound humans, and every open stretch of wall and air is filled up with holographic advertisments depicting human forms that probably haven't been seen on the Axiom for at least six centuries (this also seems to be an Easter Egg reference to The Incredibles, given the shapes of the figures depicted). WALL-E races past a school, and we catch a snippet of the lesson: "'A' is for Axiom, our home. 'B' is for BNL, your very best friend…" Humans speak to each other only via the holographic medium, even when they are floating in chairs beside each other. And in the finest distopian tradition, robots alert, assist, and interdict everyone with mechanical precision…and everyone obeys unthinkingly.

(Still think it's a kid's movie?)