Wall-Eyed

Okay, it's cute. Wall-E is another adorable Disney/Pixar film that has a lovable lead and some positively startling animation. I'm not going to spoil the story, so you can read this review with confidence that I won't reveal the ending, except to say that love conquers all.

Even though this is a kiddie flick, I believe that the story should have presented a clearer, more factual vision of the future on which the movie is premised. This movie is science fiction, but it's important to present that fiction in a plausible way, and certainly within this love story, the narrative could have included a lot more science, and a lot less implausible unscientific crap that many a six or eight year-old will carry into school. In fact, the woeful state of our education system is such that many of the adults viewing the film won't know the fact from the fiction.

Here are some of the biggest bloopers: Scraps of sheets of paper are blowing in the wind. Consider that hundreds of years after earth has been abandoned, where is all of this paper coming from? Within weeks of abandonment, this paper would begin to break down and be absorbed into the environment. I don't think the bacteria that break down organic material are going to disappear.

There's that pesky cockroach. It's alive and well. How come the robot from the mother ship didn't detect it? Presumably, the robot was looking for DNA, and the cockroach is full of that.

How did the plant that the robot ultimately discover survive in what looks like a refrigerator all these (700) years? That same plant gets thrown outside a space hatch into the cold vastness of outer space, but it continues to survive. All I can say is, "Kids, don't try this at home, or on the space shuttle."

Perhaps the most disturbing scene for me was the space ship disgorging its waste into space. Mind you, this ship had been out in space for 700 years, but was profligately discarding "waste" rather than recycling everything. After all, that space ship is a closed system, and discarding anything means that it has less to work with. That Waste Chute should have been relabled "Recycling Chute."

Okay, there's a hyper-jump in there, too, but we've seen that on Star Trek. I liked the scenes of outer space. They captured on the screen its vastness and beauty. I enjoyed Wall-E's ride into space. Again, it's improbable, but the plucky little robot held on for the ride, and for true love. I was disappointed in his love interest. She wasn't nearly as lovable and endearing as that hardworking, trash-hauling, bighearted, bug-eyed Wall-E. You gotta love 'im!