Wall•E

There's this one part in Wall•E where Mary and John—the two human characters whose names you know, other than the Captain—touch each other's hands. The pure amazed delight on their faces, the shock and skepticism, are nearly obscene. It's the type of awed, unexpected excitement a virgin feels when he or she is suddenly attracted to someone for the first time. Of course, that was exactly the type of excitement they felt.

What struck me the most about the film was how heartless its scenery was. Pixar worlds, I've just now noticed, are cold and hostile, no matter their color or location or era. The world of Wall•E was particularly unwelcoming. A dusty, trashed Earth; a disgustingly opulent spaceship, the Axiom (n., self-evident truth that requires no proof). Only the glittering, generally yawing darkness of outer space was oddly friendly to Wall•E and Eve. Wall•E ran his little mechanical fingers through the stars, observed the rust-brown Earth from far away, and danced with Eve in the midst of fire extinguisher foam around the outskirts of the space ship. The Earth, though dearly loved, was sewer-brown and a horror of failed, dystopic consumerism. The remnants of the Corporation, Buy'n'Large (or BnL), were sadly, brightly everywhere. I nearly called up my advisor and changed my major to Environmental Conservation.

It was a beautiful film. It was funny, touching, heartbreaking, suspenseful, all of the appropriate superlatives, with their original unadulterated connotations restored. Pixar has not lost its touch; indeed, this is the best Pixar film so far, which is saying something, because I love Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles with a passionate intensity. Eve's clean lines, blue eyes, and glowing green leaf-light. Wall•E's delighted discoveries amongst the ruins of our civilization. The cockroach's total inability to be killed. M•O's tiny step off of his pathway light. Mary and John's bewildered expressions. The Captain's curiosity. The Autopilot's HAL-esque red eye. (I really need to see 2001.) The little green plant, growing in ruins of a refrigerator, sprouting from red, clay-like soil, that changes the whole world.

Highs:
• Wall•E's Apple start up noise
• The Directive metaphor
• The extreme environmental analogy
• The crazed robot escape—the HALT robots were wonderfully stoic
• The space dance
• The "La Vie en Rose" montage
• M•O
• The huge Wall•Es
• The cockroach in the Twinkies—those would last forever

Highs:
• Not long enough.

Wall•E: A+