Wall-E

I took Sean and Phoebe to see Wall-E last night at the Dominion. It's been about 18 months since my last attempt to take Sean and Finn to the cinema which wasn't particularly successful with Sean shouting loudly that he was hungry and when could he go home and Finn going daft becuse it was too dark and loud and he was scared. I was miffed last Frday when the boys turned down the opportunity to see Wall-E. You'd think I'd asked them to dig a latrine in the back garden, the look on their faces.

Anyway, Sean had a change of mind when I brought Phoebe into the equation but he still was asking how long until it finished and was generally fidgety until it was done. I'm not convinced he particularly enjoyed it. It wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped, falling between a number of stools: an entertaining cartoon; a science-fiction story; a love story. The animation is outstanding but the humour was perhaps too subtle, especially for a five year-old like Sean, when compared with other recent great animated films, such as Toy Story. As a character, Wall-E is endearing but very like ET in appearance.

As my nickname was Wally at school (like my peers, by contraction of surname as it was before Del-Boy's "what a wally" phrase gave it a more negative connotation) it only remains to be seen if Sean ends up picking up the nickname "Wall-E". Hopefully with it being the school holidays just now the connection between his name and the film will have passed his school mates by once P2 begins. He saw a few of them at a party at the weekend.