The new Pixar film Wall-E might be considered the real blockbuster of the summer movie season so far, if only because most of the other obvious lollapaloozas--Iron Man, Sex and the City, that Harrison Ford thing--opened a month or so before summer officially started a little more than a week ago. A very funny, beautifully designed, unexpectedly affecting (I cried, okay? The walking trash compactor with the googly eyes fell in love and I cried. And I'd do it again.) animated fable, Wall-E deserves all the riches it will earn for its makers, which will probably only pile up faster and faster as people look for something to take the kids to see even as the remaining summer sure-shots, such as the new Batman and Hellboy films, turn weirder and darker. Because the movie carries a pretty explicit satirical message indicting the human race--or Americans, not that there's that much difference--of having selfishly abandoned their stewardship of their own ruined planet, it will also set off a publicity-getting barrage attacks by conservative commentators denouncing it as tree-hugging propaganda, which I'm sure will do it at least as much harm as those attacks on Mr. Incredible and his family for being elitists.
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