Those of us who have children have long known of the overt morality of Pixar's movies and now Robert Velarde's new book sheds light on the topic for everyone. Written in 2010, this book covers all the Pixar feature length films through the fantastic Up. Each chapter focuses on a specific virtue in relation to one specific movie (with some overlap, of course.)
The Wisdom of Pixar
by Robert Velarde
IVP
2010
Toy Story is tied to identity; Finding Nemo to family; A Bug's Life to justice. Each chapter has a brief bio of the movie with some interesting facts, but the highlight of the chapters is in digging deeply into the films to pull out the moral of the story. This is very important in an American culture that many feel has lost its way. How often do we think on what a movie is really telling the viewer? The deeper question becomes: if the movie's only moral is that we should take vengeance then is it really a movie worth watching?
Velarde does an expert job at showing us how to look at movies critically - not just asking the question, "did I enjoy it?" but "was this a good movie?" in the literal sense of the word. While I believe that parents and interested movie buffs will enjoy and learn from this book it is important to note that most of the values in the book are tied to Christian values and there is no secret that Velarde intends this book for believers.
If you are a parent or a Pixar fan then I highly recommend this interesting and informative book that is in the same vein as the philosophy of or Tao of series of books although from the Christian perspective. I was almost as enamored as I am with the films themselves, which says a lot of how much I enjoyed the book.
