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Pixar's Little Tramp
Wall-E is a little bit Chaplin, a little E.T.
Here's my antidote for junk kid culture: good kid culture. Your daughter zoning out on preteen Disney musicals? Rent Help! and A Hard Day's Night. Hyper-driven, commercial-laden Nick programming driving you nuts? Throw Modern Times in the DVD player. Cries for Happy Meals driving you crazy? Go out for sushi. My son hasn't kicked his Hannah Montana crush or Power Rangers habit, but he knows the words to a dozen Beatles songs and loves Charlie Chaplin. And his favorite breakfast is a tin of surimi from the local Latin takeout restaurant: inch-long eels smothered in olive oil and peppers and garlic.
I'm not bragging about my five-year-old's sophisticated taste. Okay, I am bragging — but I'm making a point too. A huge part of a parent's job is to curate and expose him to culture. For me, it's so much fun singing "Ticket to Ride" with Cole, I can't even call it a job.
Of course, as long as Pixar's around, you can trust your offspring with at least some of today's pop culture. With Wall-E, the kings of animation have hit the ball way out of the park.
Anthropomorphic robots are a staple of cartoons and sci-fi; Robots and The Iron Giant are also excellent kiddie flicks. But rarely has a nuts-and-bolts character had the vaudevillian soul of Wall-E. He looks more than a little like E.T., and he serves a similar function: as an emissary from another planet (which in this case used to be our planet) who reminds us humans of the humanity we've lost in ourselves (ditto Iron Giant).
I'm not bragging about my five-year-old's sophisticated taste. Okay, I am bragging — but I'm making a point too. A huge part of a parent's job is to curate and expose him to culture. For me, it's so much fun singing "Ticket to Ride" with Cole, I can't even call it a job.
Of course, as long as Pixar's around, you can trust your offspring with at least some of today's pop culture. With Wall-E, the kings of animation have hit the ball way out of the park.
Anthropomorphic robots are a staple of cartoons and sci-fi; Robots and The Iron Giant are also excellent kiddie flicks. But rarely has a nuts-and-bolts character had the vaudevillian soul of Wall-E. He looks more than a little like E.T., and he serves a similar function: as an emissary from another planet (which in this case used to be our planet) who reminds us humans of the humanity we've lost in ourselves (ditto Iron Giant).
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