The following informative and delightful sketch is set in the (alas!) still frustratingly distant future when our webmaster has finally become president of the Disney Corporation and sacked every employee and board member remotely responsible for lobbying Congress for a cynical extension of the U.S. copyright laws (in order to protect, not the original copyright holders, no, but the corporate scavengers that come after them who wish to have their own financially cushy lives by withholding a cultural legacy from the American people -- always allowing them to glimpse the treasury in question, of course, after paying the appropriate ticket price at the door or signing up to reserve their own prohibitively expensive FBI-protected DVD copy of the works that, by rights, never should have belonged to anybody except Walt Disney himself...)


Yes, Mrs. Charmin, send in Steven Spielberg. (The lousy... wasting all those millions like that...)

You called, boss?

Yes, I called.

So, did you like the picture (like everybody else, tee hee hee)!




What's the idea setting a children's movie in what looks for all the world like a post-nuclear holocaust?

Well, I --

And what's the idea having a cockroach as a sidekick?

Well --

Earth to Spielberg: Roaches aren't cute.

I --

Yes, I heard a few mothers in the audience going "awww!" when they saw him, but in retrospect, I'm sure they were only trying to set a reassuring example for their children, who at first (and often at even second) glance were rightly disgusted with the character in question.

I --

Fancy, sending a cockroach scuttling about and calling it "cute."

Well --

It's lucky for you that the storyboard didn't permit the roach to fly into space with Wall-E or my mind would have been sidetracked through the entire film, wondering when that disgusting eyesore was going to scuttle back into my peripheral vision.

Well --

Well, speak up, man: Have you nothing to say for yourself.

Well, look at IMDB, where the movie got 9 out of 10 stars.


IMDB, indeed: Knee-jerk self-congratulations.

What?

I mean, they cut you so much slack in their assessments?

How so?

Well, just look at the IMDB section about "goofs," right? Usually, the reviewers mercilessly use this section to point out mistakes, right, so we can have a little laugh at the filmmakers.

So?

So? Read the "goofs" section that your fan club gave YOU.

"Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmaker)...

Oh, yeah: Every other film in the database makes errors -- but can Spielberg make errors -- NO. No, there must have been some insider joke behind every apparent flaw in the film.

Well, maybe there was.


Oh, yes, I forgot: You're perfect: not.

Now get out of here -- as of now the Pixar corporation is dissolved and you work directly for ME!

But --

Now then, first things first: I need some coffee in here with two creams: on the double!

Oh, yeah? Well, I quit!



You can't quit: I fire YA! Secretary Charmin, call in security. We've got a wannabe diva in here who's going wild.

But --



Out, out, out --

Oh, as for Wall-E himself, he was just a disappointingly derivative version of that tired Pixar lamp of yours -- it looked like your lamp had come out of retirement after putting on some weight and then rusting!

But --

A cockroach for a sidekick in a post-nuclear world! Oh, yes, charming children's fare, indeed!