Computer Love

Six months after its release, I finally watched the cartoon WALL-E. As the self-named Biggest Apple Hater in the State of Michigan, I don't rush down to the latest Pixar releases, because the company was started and run by Steve Jobs till Disney bought it in 2006. But after I was persuaded by my nieces, I finally gave in and rented the thing from Blockbuster.

I thought I'd write my review, considering the Oscar nominations are coming out Thursday, and this movie is sure to get a bunch of them.

I thought the movie was beautifully animated but was annoyed by the little Apple references the Pixarites kept throwing in. The scenes in the second half on the spaceship, too, got too wrapped up in Current Issues facing the United States of the 21st Century and preached too hard for my tastes.

WALL-E, or Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class, is a little garbage compactor robot living on an empty Earth around the year 2805. For nearly 700 years he has somehow stayed alive and continued his "directive" -- the function all robots are programmed to do -- and cleaned up the piles of 

garbage left behind by the humans, even as other WALL-E units have conked out. The people took off in huge spaceships called "skyliners" in the early 22nd century. They were supposed to come back after five-year cruises, but never did.

WALL-E collects old junk that interests him, such as a spork, a jewelry case, a Rubik's Cube, even a bra. How all these things, let alone the buildings, stayed so well preserved after 700 years out in the elements, is a mystery to me. Just look at any ghost town in the American West or Pripyat, Ukraine, by Chernobyl, and see how fast abandoned buildings are reclaimed by nature.

Also hard to explain is how WALL-E's videotape of "Hello, Dolly!" and the VCR-iPod Video rig he watches it on, also continued to work for seven centuries. After all, magnetic tape lasts maybe 50 years, and the average iPod battery dies after 1-1/2 to 2 years, yet here it works fine. Did the little robot figure out some way to keep recharging these doohickeys?

Day after day, this is the puppy dog eyed droid's life, until one when the ground shakes like a quake, and a spaceship drops off a shiny girl robot named EVE to look for plant life. She has been compared to the white polycarbonate iPods and iMacs of this decade, and her design apparently came in part from Jonathan Ive, Apple's design chief.

EVE at first is all business and bitchy -- you should see what her laser cannon on her arm does to a cargo ship's hull. But then WALL-E saves her from a sandstorm and shows her all his trinkets and trash. She starts to loosen up, and we have machines ... ahh...in love. Once she finds a plant, she shuts down until the ship comes back to pick her up. WALL-E is in love, and he takes her on "dates" and protects her in all kinds of weather, even as she stays dormant.

The skyliner Axiom  is the movie's second half, and it seems the Pixarites decided to throw in even more comments about early 21st century American life.

The first half was a "green" message about the need to control garbage and protect the environment. The second seems to warn us about the continuing obesity crisis; the continued breakdown of face to face, direct communication of neighbors; and materialism and consumerism. The Axiom is one of many skyliners sent into space by Buy N Large, the monster corporation that has taken over all business and all governments on Earth. Some critics noted its resemblance to if Wal-Mart owned the world.

The Axiom houses thousands of plus-size humans who glide around on hover-chairs. They spend their entire day waited on by robots and communicating with each other through their combination TV/computer/wireless phone screens. WALL-E has stowed aboard the ship and accidentally disconnects two humans from their screens, John and Mary, who discover the joys of each other, the stars and outer space. Mary finds a swimming pool that she never knew existed, though the gigantic thing right there in the middle of the ship!

The obese humans may not necessarily be a warning about the U.S. getting too fat but may be showing that people have become like babies. The people wear outfits that look like giant Onesies with Buy N Large's corporate logo on them. They act helpless, letting the robots do everything, until their captain finally calls them to action.

The way they talk to each other only through the screens could be like people blabbing into cell phones while driving around, or sitting on the couch in front of the TV, or chatting through the Internet. None of them really connect until a crisis sweeps through the Axiom, as if saying that if a big crisis hit our planet, would then we finally notice each other?

Besides EVE looking like the robot that Steve Jobs may have on the market in 10 years, there are a number of Apple things. When WALL-E is fully charged, he makes a BONG sound that Macs make when they first boot up. AUTO, the bad guy autopilot, is voiced by MacinTalk, a text to speech program from the Mac operating system. WALL-E uses an iPod and has an old Mac keyboard lying around the truck in which he "sleeps."

In the end, WALL-E is a very pretty movie, but its propaganda and kissing the butt of its founder and his original company really put me off. I rejected Cars after I saw a white vehicle with an Apple logo and "84" on it pass Lightning McQueen in the early scenes of the movie. WALL-E is a true product of Hollywood and its Apple butt-kissers.