Movies

‘Wall-E,’ Pixar’s Most Political Film Ever, Attacked Left and Right

The control freaks at Disney would prefer I not tell you how much I love Pixar’s “Wall-E” until Friday, even though there are plenty of rave reviews out there on the interweb already (check Rotten Tomatoes and MRQE), including one by Richard Roeper, whose paychecks of course come straight from the Mouse House. I could complain about last night’s severely overbooked all-media screening at the E-Walk, where I missed half the animated short preceding the feature — and much of the brilliant closing credits — because of the rush of late comers, popcorn consumers and people fleeing the auditorium. When will studios learn it’s counterproductive to subject critics to this sort of high-handed behavior (there were no other screenings offered to me) for good movies? It’s not like “Wall-E” is “The Love Guru.” It’s possible Disney held off screening “Wall-E” because of its surprising darkness and explosive political content, both of which were barely hinted at in a 30-minute excerpt I saw a couple of months ago. Some conservatives, including my treasured colleague Kyle Smith, are up in arms because the president of a multi-national conglomerate that has wreaked environmental havoc on the earth — and exiled its population to other space for centuries — uses the phrase “stay the course,” a favorite of Dubya, who inherited it from H.W. and Ronald Reagan (and, I wouldn’t be suprprised, Herbert Hoover). The neo-cons are also less than thrilled that the president is portrayed by Fred Willard, long Hollywood’s leading expert in playing nitwits, and that the film, basically a robot love story, is also an extended, razor-sharp attack on corporate malfeasance and consumer spending run amok. You might think us lefties would embrace “Wall-E” for precisely that reason, but Devin Faraci at CHUD raises some good points about the hypocrisy of this message coming from a studio that is part of a multi-national corporation (as, it should be noted, is The Post) that has flooded the world with highly disposable toys spun off from Disney and Pixar movies (spoofed in this art from Faraci’s site) including a full line inspired by “Wall-E.” Disney and Pixar are understandably playing down the movie’s political message.