The best . . .By John DeSando, WCBE's It's Movie Time
"With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls,
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do, that dares love attempt."
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
Forget making love. The new erogenous zone is the hand, specifically holding hands as featured in the new Pixar animation, Wall*E. A futuristic love story between the titular trash collecting robot (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), doing his thing for hundreds of fruitless years, and a beautiful search robot, Eve (appropriately named), who discovers he has collected the answer humans floating in space have hoped for, evidence that they can return to their garbage suffocated planet.
Like all love affairs, it's difficult to figure out their attraction, but love it is, and it propels this little gem of a film right into the endearing space of Nemo, Toy Story, and my fav?Ratatouille. Pixar and writer/director Andrew Stanton have the gift of displaying humanity in its flaws and its glories while chastising its destructive side, in this case the neglected environment.
While the love story, hand holding and all, is worth the admission, the satire of an indolent, wasteful population accurately disturbs as our population continues to get fatter and more environmentally careless, to the point where we vacate the premises.
The animators have drawn heavily and artfully from Star Wars, 2001, Hello Dolly, Seurat, and E.T., among others, but most of all the wizards have revived the simple love story?it shouldn't take animation, science fiction, and post- apocalyptic stories to do so, but heck, I've been looking for love since my second failed marriage a long time ago.
Who would have thought? Handholding! Now that's simple and provocative, environmentally safe, and my 3rd grade nun's criticism of me (holding a little girl's hand: "You dirty thing"). You can imagine how I loved tormenting her and being in love at the same time. And we were the promise of the future (to which I complied with six children?such a good boy).
Wall*E is the most satisfying love story of the year.
John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, which can be heard streaming at www.wcbe.org Fridays at 3:01 pm and 8:01 pm and on demand anytime. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com