Wall-E
FulltimeCasual just reminded me that I went and saw Wall-E on the weekend with Sol and I haven’t written anything about it here.
Sunday afternoon is a pretty good time to see a kids film, there was a big line at the door of the cinema and lots of anticipation. Sol and I nabbed a seat near the centre with me sitting next to a family and Sol having charmed a uni student who was there on her own. I brought a good supply of Fantales for myself and Chupa Chups for Sol (his favourite sugar source at the moment) an we started on those before the curtain even opened. In retrospect, that was a bad idea.
So we get through the ads and previews (Sol yabbers at me through them all) and the feature starts (I try to tell Sol that talking time is over but he whispers loudly at me to shut-up).
I know it’s a cartoon but the opening scene shocked me in an unexpected way. I’m not a big fan of preaching in movies but I wasn’t too worried about it in this film as it didn’t seem to moralise so much as just present a particular unpleasant future. There were some really good moments in this film which spoke to our consumerist society without taking the high moral ground.
For me, the anti consumerist message in this film is not about condemning but about remembering. The film seems to say that we have forgotten who we are and that we need to remember ourselves.
But I’m only thinking about that in hindsight. At the time, I was so engrossed in the story that I didn’t pay much attention to the broader meaning of it. Wall-E is great protagonist even though he doesn’t speak. His character’s movement and body language tells the story in such an emotional way that you forget that there actually isn’t any dialogue! (For the most part)
The basic story of the film is a Hero’s journey kind of thing. Wall-E is a forgotten robot repetitively performing a menial task who is drawn into an adventure and saves the day. It’s also a romance which is strangely touching with a robot called Eve. It doesn’t retread the boring old “are robot’s people” question which has been asked a million times in every other film about robots and computers but just goes past that and has you asking “how do robots express romance?” there is a wonderful scene with Wall-E and Eve just playing together with movement in a kind of dance which is quite uplifting.
There are lots of other fun characters in Wall-E but most of the film is about these two robots and how they help each other and discover each other’s “directives”.
Reading back over this, I realise I’ve described a sentimental movie that tries to preach at you but there is also a lot of fun in this film and I haven’t really described that well. But there are just hundreds of little gags in this film that have you kind of chuckling and smirking contentedly all the way through.
Oh yeah, and visually this film is amazing. Pixar have excelled themselves once again. There are many scenes that just hold you with their visual appeal.
Sol’s impressions of the film were positive overall. He especially liked his springy seat and my Fantales. As the sugar really took hold of him, he started wriggling and making noise and tapping and fiddling and demanding more Fantales and Chupa Chups so that I started to get a bit tense that I was going to have to remove him and there would be a big tantrum as I dragged him kicking and screaming from the theatre. Thankfully, this was only during lulls in the action so once we got into the “end game” part of the film, he settled down. phew.
[tags]children, movies, sol, wall-e[/tags]
