"Eeeee... va?"

I'm not even sure why I chose this movie to watch as the first film to watch in its entirety. But I thought it might look the best now with the HDTV. Boy, was I wrong (even if the SO didn't believe me, but she will soon enough). What movie could that be? Probably now one of the SO's favorite Pixar films, WALL-E.

The story is simple enough. Humans have been consuming way too much waste and not recycling, reusing, reducing their consumption to the point where humans had to leave the planet in order to allow Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class (or WALL-E) robots to clean up the planet. When we first see the planet, we meet the one remaining WALL-E robot who's been cleaning up for 700 years. But WALL-E seems different, in that he has a personality. And it's almost like he's reawakened the spirit of Charlie Chaplin, with his silent movie approach to comedy. The second day, WALL-E has company on the planet, as a probe ship releases an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) robot to look for plant life on Earth. WALL-E is smitten with love for EVE, but she's in no mood for love (kinda like the SO when I get on her bad side... which can be a lot, so I empathize with WALL-E). Luckily, he's able to demonstrate to EVE he's no enemy, and he shows her everything that he finds interesting that he's collected in his shelter, including a green, leafy plant. This stimulates EVE to send a signal to the probe ship to pick her up, and WALL-E and EVE are transported to Axiom, the flagship that has been the home of humans the last 700 years.

Not to my surprise, humans have become fat and lazy because of technolgical advances. Very 2001-esque, and by no surprise, the ship's main computer is the enemy, not allowing the humans to return to Earth because it is in autopilot mode. With the help of the captain of the ship, WALL-E and EVE are able to get the ship to return to Earth with the sacrifice of WALL-E's body. The ship zooms home, and EVE finds the necessary parts to save him but initially his personality is missing. By some miracle, WALL-E gets his personality back, and all is well with humans and nature again.

A little sappy at the end, but I love the beginning of the movie. No words, just actions and gestures that get the point across about WALL-E and his love for EVE. It's depressing how bad the planet is left, with garbage covering every inch of the planet. And I'm sure that's the underlying message for us. If we don't start changing our ways, we could end up like this. For the SO, she loves the underlying message, but I think more than anything, she likes to say WALL-E like it's said in the film (some weird Boston thing, I think).

What I noticed with the film on our HDTV is how the DVD player doesn't provide a clear picture, definitely not high definition. And it was blatantly obvious, but the SO disagreed with me. I kept telling her that it's not quite clear, but with an animated feature, it won't show up as bad as a live-action film. And that will become evident in a future post, I guarantee it.

So, the DVD is a keeper, mostly because it puts a smile on the SO's face, and getting rid of it would permanently put me in the doghouse (if we had a real doghouse, she probably would shove me in there) and I can't risk that. So I'll just avoid that confrontation. Later!