Editor's note: This is part of a life and arts point-counterpoint. To read the counterpoint to this argument, click here

Here we go again.

If I wanted to cry within the first few minutes of an opening act, I’d masochistically insert “Up” into my DVD player. But real life is gloomy enough. If I turn to the news, I can watch media mad men spouting off terms such as “the money shot” while documenting the worst oil disaster in U.S. history. And with that in mind, a movie that montages from sweet innocent youth to orthopedics and last rites does little to lift my oil-slicked spirits.

This is where “Wall-E” zooms into view. From the moment I hit play, the movie is optimistic and endearing. Sure, we’ve destroyed the planet and made it barren wasteland to be cleaned by robots while what’s left of humanity takes a big corporate-sponsored exodus into space, but what a way to go. Forget the D.I.Y. balloons tied to some old house and grumpy old man-types. I want to go to the stars, a place where glorious robot love can be expressed properly with space dancing and showtunes of old.

I need only to look to the robots for comfort. By trade, he’s a lonely Waste Allocation Load Lifter with a pet cockroach to keep him company while she, an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, is on a classified mission. Throw in a tendency to shoot first and investigate later, and EVE is a plant-hunting pod of awesomeness. And Wall-E is her short circuit-style knight in interchangeable armor.

When these robots rise above their programming and share a spark of love — that hand-holding moment of interconnection they learned through watching our long lost movies — their reaction to this discovery prompts those they’ve encountered to realize that life isn’t about wandering through life in a state of mindless consumption.

Rather, the interplay between Wall-E and EVE suggest to onlookers that the meaning of life is to do more than just survive; it’s to experience the act of living while finding shared purpose.

Also, it is discovered, that given 700 years to recuperate, life isn’t so bad back there on Earth. And in a scene strangely reminiscent of the Bowman Star-Child from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” it’s uplifting to see the infantile humans file out of their starship and stand on their own two feet, ready to take back their collective destinies and steward their planet into recovery.

Plus, robots are infinitely more useful to this end than talking dogs, the random stray child or a house tethered to an obscene amount of balloons.

- Helen DiRenzo-Grant is a journalism junior.