life lessons from Wall-E

This movie made me cry, Wall-E.

A birthday gift for Young Prince from She-Ra Fairy Godmother and her clan, we all went smuggling sippy-cups filled with water and snackie-bags of M&Ms into the old movie theatre (yes, vinyl seats and NO CUP HOLDERS! Imagine that...they still exist), Mama Llama with her small canister of soy-free treats and settled over two rows of seats. We did buy popcorn (one large bag that we split into six little plastic canisters for each child...canisters we REUSE from our home supplies), and the lights were never turned off in our theatre, so I personally think She-Ra should have had a partial discount.

At the very least on the popcorn.

I am not even quite sure how to begin all I felt while watching this movie. For an animated "children's" summer flick, I found it extremely profound, evoking anger, resentment, sadness, idealistic desires to Change The World that I once upon a time felt when living in Ecuador, frustration and a deep empathy.

I could write on the varying degrees of symbolism, satire, social statements and the priceless personification of the loveable robots and their cucaracha friend. Equally easy would be to reflect upon what I already do to play my part as a global citizen and what more I can do to be better.

As I cannot simply let a movie with a moral just be...

I asked my children what they took from the movie. Paraphrasing La Princesita (6 3/4 years), she was most taken by the lazy people who were so fat that they could hardly even walk. They would talk on screens to people who sat right next to them on floating chairs that transported them from one place to another, sipping their soda pop, unaware of anything else that was going on around them. Their only realities were what was flashing on the TV screens in front of them...until Wall-E interrupted two of them, who then became aware of this radical situation and these two came to see the beauty of their surroundings and enjoy the actual physical presence (as opposed to the virtual personality) of each other.

She also mentioned that no exercise and bad eating is just not good for you.

The Young Prince's (almost 4) synopsis was that Wall-E was stuck cleaning up the mess that the people had made, but the people didn't want to clean up their mess so they left Earth to go make a mess somewhere else.

He also really like when "the white robot" and Wall-E were in love.

Twinkies, pop culture references, Mass Shopping Giants and technology were interwoven into the plot to bring to mind all that we do today to trash this Earth. I found it ironic that the B&L (play on BJs?) giant that had taken control of not only the minimal clean-up "effort" on Earth but had also created the outer space utopia upon which brainwashed humans could survive (not *live*, mind you, but merely survive, a distinct difference noted by the Captain of the spaceship) ended up being the same entity that had initially created Wall-E, who in turn opened the eyes of the ignorant humans, created allies among robots previously programmed to merely complete their tasks, and empowered the humans to return to Life...and to bring life back to Earth.

Perhaps this is a statement as to what some of these powerhouses can do now so as to stave off the inevitable.

My children, in the meantime, remain even more staunch proponents of cars that run on trash, not gasoline.