WALL-E: My Film of the Year

WALL-E: A film with a lot of heart and invention.

A cynical part of me was prepared for WALL-E, a lonely waste disposal robot, to be another piece of arch emotional manipulation from Disney. As I sat there waiting for the film to start, I was thinking "Come on Disney, what have you got? You are going to orphan something, I know it...BUT I am adult now, I can HANDLE it." Then within minutes of the film opening, tears were steaming down my face. I admit it, I was totally won over by WALL-E and the story. The film had so many great messages about life, the environment and really fighting for a better world and values.

I couldn't help reflecting on WALL-E's mission to clear up unwanted materialism, whilst helping out at the Children's Society this week. The store was shut for two weeks and there was a huge backlog of clothes, toys and books, most of which we couldn't fit into the shop. I ended up bagging most of it for an international charity and when their collector came I was curious about what happened to it all? (mostly Primark, cheap toys etc). He explained that they air-drop the stuff in containers on-to African villages. Or as a friend summarised to me, "So poor Asians make stuff that eventually ends up dumped on poor Africans?" Yes it is a bit surreal....