If you have a child, or know a child, you should take them to see Wall-E. If there are no kids around, you should go see it anyway. (When we saw it last night, a large percent of the audience was there without kids.)
Not only is it an excellent movie in its own right, but it incorporates some impressive themes. For one, it recognizes that it’s possible for humans to wreck the Earth to the point where it’s uninhabitable. Trash is the environmental issue of note in the movie, but there are climate change messages in there too if you look for them. It’s not every day that you see that in a kids’ movie.
Just as cool (at least to me) is that plants play a central role in the movie – not as singing, dancing characters, as one might expect in a Pixar movie, but as a measure of Earth’s livability. It’s plants, not beef or oil or twinkies, that make it possible for Earth to sustain human life. And it acknowledges that eating real food grown from the earth is worth some sweat and hard work. If the ending was a little too optimistic for my taste, well, so be it. They got some important messages across in the meantime.
Good job, Pixar!