My Review of WALL*E

Stay tuned after the review for a special behind the scenes expose of the making of this blog!WALL*E is the latest animated offering from Pixar. If you’ve seen a good cartoon movie they’ve done it, most likely. Of course now that Disney owns them expect them to take a severe downturn in quality. Coming soon- Wall*E 2- Princess Eve’s Fantastic Castle.

WALL*E was preceded by a short ‘toon. Pixar believes in giving value for your buck. Again, since Disney bought it, expect this to end as well. The opening short was a heartwarming ‘toon about a magician who starves his pet rabbit. Seriously. It was cute and funny and PETA picketed the theater. But enough about that.

For the sake of laziness, I’ll revert to an old trope where I run down the characters instead of a proper review.. This is the lazy way of reviewing. All you kids out there- don’t try this at home. In fact, why re you kids reading this at all? Shouldn’t you be playing Grand Theft Auto 4 on the Wii?

So here’s the cast, in no particular order other than how they occur to me as I type. (This is why I need an editor. Why don’t you people listen to me when I say that?)

WALL*E: Wally (it is just easier to type this way) is a robot. In fact, he may be the only robot left on the planet Earth. You see, the Earth has been overrun by big box stores, like Wal-Mart and K-Mart and Mart-Mart. Everything is a Mart. There is Gas-Mart ($17 per gallon) and Clothes-Mart (unisex jumpers for fall fashion). There is a Mart for every need. In fact, in order to go to the bathroom you have to go to Toilet-Mart. But that didn’t last long as the only Mart they didn’t have was Garbage Mart. There was garbage everywhere- garbage in the streets, garbage in the buildings, garbage in the landfills, which honestly is what you’d expect anyway, and garbage in the seas and on the beaches. Dammit, Al Gore was right! Anyway, the whole planet is like a giant Detroit. So the whole population made the only sane and rational decision- they got the hell out of there and left the Earth.

Well, the Mart Company sent a whole load of Wall*Ebots to clean up the mess. Wall*E stands for What A Lousy Life* Everyone, and it is true. Know what these robots did? They roamed the planet and ate trash. Wall*Ebots are squat and square (kind of like fat midgets) and after eating the trash they crapped out a cube of garbage and used it to build something. Whole towns were made of square robot shit. Well, after 700 years of eating trash the robots just had enough. Can you blame them? One by one they hooked themselves up to the Kevorkian-bot and committed suicide. Then the remaining Wall*Ebots ate them, crapped them out, and used them to build something, like an ice cream stand.

Wally was the last Wall*Ebot and he was a little eccentric. For example, he collected things. He had a whole shelf of interesting (to him, that is) odds and ends, like used napkins, cans of Sterno, broken crutches, Lafayette 2007 yearbooks, junk like that. Wally also had an extensive DVD collection of the entire Disney library. Oddly enough, the only DVDs and videos to survive the centuries were Disney movies. What a coincidence. Wally watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang until the tape broke, which was not a moment too soon because he was developing an unhealthy crush on Dick Van Dyke. He also had a pet, which is the next character I’ll review.

His pet was a cockroach. Let’s move on.

Wally lived a life of quiet desperation. Everyday was the same- eat, crap, repeat. Give him credit- he was very regular. In one scene he appeared a bit constipated but it passed. (Ha! Get the pun there? And this I am proud of?) It all changed when the third character of this little reivew, I mean movie, appeared.

EVE: Eve is a female bot sent to the Earth for signs of life. The first thing she found was a Larry the Cable Guy movie and the mission was cancelled but they sent her back just to make sure. She is the exact opposite of Wally. Wally is square and short and looks like a cross between a box and a tank. Eve is smooth and white. She is long and cylindrical and slightly tapered. She emits a slight electrical humming and moves at high speed. Do I need to spell it out for you? She’s a vibrator.

Eve (Electrical Vibratory Ecstasy) has no use for Wally. And why would she? She’s a vibrator, she’s there to replace a man, not fall in love with one. In fact, she tried to kill Wally at every turn, but Wally is a masochist and that just turned him on.

Wally took her to his bachelor pad and tried every trick in book, but Eve was cold to him. (Why does that sound familiar?) In fact, nothing impressed her. He showed her his shiny rock collection- nothing. He showed her his pile of funny shaped potato chips- zilch. Even his complete run of Mad Magazine, from issue 143- 198 (missing only issue 156) failed to impress her. It wasn’t until he showed her his marijuana plant did she get interested. In fact, she took it from him and returned to her mother ship. That’s really why she was sent to Earth- to score some weed.

CAPTAIN McBUTERPANTS is the next character. OK, he wasn’t next in the movie, but this is my review and I want to write about him here. He was like everyone else from Earth. He is fat and lazy and never gets out of his chair, slurping Big Gulps all day and watching TV. (Hey, is this film really set in the future?) His job is to do nothing, and if he isn’t living the good life I don’t know who is. In fact, the autopilot does all the work. (I wish I had an autopilot.)

Wally and Eve end up on the ship and have all kinds of wacky adventures, most of which involve running around a lot.

The autopilot didn’t want to return to Earth, and after seeing this film I don’t blame him, but the Captain does. He wrests control of the ship from the autopilot and set course for Earth. This was not as easy as it sounds. The guy was about 700 pounds and had never walked a step in his life. In fact, his first step out of his chair caused him to break three bones in his foot and the trip back to Earth was delayed three weeks while he healed.

Well, to make a long review short (but alas, not any funnier), Wally and Eve return to Earth, Wally converts Eve to the hetero team, and the humans return to Earth, prepared to plant pizza trees and just generally fuck up the planet all over again.

Bottom line: Wall*E is a cautionary tale of the dangers of excess and gluttony. But the robots are cute so you’ll ignore the serious underlying themes.

 So what is the story behind this blog? Well, yesterday I saw Wall*E. I liked it and that was the end of it. Believe it or not, I don’t blog everything. If you are waiting for a blog about lunch today, for example, don’t waste your time, I’m not writing one. Wall*E didn’t have a hook.Something has to click in my head for me to blog about it. If I have to work at it, the quality isn’t there. (Stop snickering.)

That’s the story of the review, and also as much as you’ll get about the lunch today. There’s no telling what will work in a blog and what won’t- god knows Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride is hit or miss. I kind of like my movie reviews and hope you like this one too. (Sweet smile, please please, not too humble.)