A too cute apocalypse?

Rob Price

A friend told my wife the audience broke into applause at the end of "Wall-E," the new movie by Pixar, when she took her two pre-teenage sons to see the show. "Wall-E," she said, is a greatmovie for children; it's also possibly a terrifying movie for adults.

I was intrigued. So far this summer, I've watched "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk," and both movies are entertaining but far from terrifying. A movie that entertains children while scaring adults seemed like an interesting exercise.

So my wife and daughter and I caught a 9 p.m. showing of "Wall-E" last week - in the middle of the week unfortunately because the movie theater was nearly empty. It's possible that had the theater been full of people there would have been an ovation at the end of the show. Because "Wall- E" is very good.

How good? Well, not in the same league as a good Bergman film, but of course nobody makes Bergman films anymore. A really good Woody Allen film, like the 1979 "Manhattan," is a better movie. "The Godfather" is a better movie, and so is "Chinatown."

But those movies are all realistic representations of actual people in dramatic situations. As a Pixar production, "Wall-E" is an animated movie on the order of "Finding Nemo" and the older "Toy Story." But "Wall- E" tackles much more serious subject matter than either of those movies. It's basically an animated post-apocalyptic romance/comedy, with cute characters that should appeal to children, but a larger political/economic context that adults should find sobering.

The first third of "Wall-E" takes place on earth, but it's an earth that looks blasted by some ecological disaster. Seen from space, the planet appears brown; it has lost either its oceans or the atmosphere that makes the oceans appear blue from a distance. On terra firma, the character Wall-E works amidst a devastated urban landscape: deserted skyscrapers are dwarfed by even taller towers of compacted trash, the discarded junk of a civilization that apparently choked to death on its own trash.

Wall-E himself is a robot who has been working the trash for hundreds of years. He's a lonely little robot, whose name is an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifters - Earth-class. Wall-E has a soul. For kicks, he watches an old tape of "Hello Dolly" and moons over the musical romance. When moved, he crosses his two metallic hands in front of him in a gesture that suggests shyness, eagerness, anxiety and hope.

His lonely existence changes abruptly with the introduction of a sleek, futuristic robot from space named Eve. After an initial bumpy introduction in which Eve threatens to explode Wall-E with some sort of blaster ray, the romance takes off, and Wall-E and Eve are soon crooning each other's names in unearthly hitech robotic tones.

And then the plot thickens, as all good plots must. We learn that earth was abandoned hundreds of years before by its human occupants - at least those lucky enough to have boarded a giant space ship operated by the same company responsible for generating the trash that fouled the planet. Those people have evolved into a race of couch potatoes, serviced by an army of robots that makes sure they remain indolent and in danger of loosing their fingers and toes to layers of fat.

More stuff happens, and children will be entertained by some of the slapstick moments. Adults meanwhile may fidget in their seats as they contemplate the semi-human blobs that mirror our own obese adult world.

But "Wall-E" is, after all, an animated cartoon. When my daughter was three or four, I took her to see "Beauty and the Beast" at least 10 times before Disney finally released the movie in a VHS format. Then we all watched it about 20 times more at home. "Beauty and the Beast" was actually nominated for a Best Picture Oscar; that's how good it was. But I really don't care to watch it anymore, whereas I am happy to watch "The Godfather" anytime.

It's possible that's the problem with a movie that's geared toward a younger audience but which contains mature themes for adults. I may enjoy the mature content of the movie, but the movie also is always going to be a children's story. The ecological horror of "Wall-E" should be terrifying, but Wall-E himself is so darn cute, there's a limit to how seriously you want to take it. There is no one scary enough in "Wall-E" to say, "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse."