The Wisdom of Pixar: An Animated Look at Virtue

In this slender interpretation, Velarde (The Heart of Narnia) mines Pixar’s animated films for truths about virtues such as friendship, courage, imagination, humor, love, and ambition. The book is at its best when he sticks closely to the narrative of such modern classics as Finding Nemo, Up, or Ratatouille, but is less successful when he moralizes or attempts to drive home his points, which unfortunately is much of the time. The book lacks the gee-whiz observations that have made other pop culture explorations so interesting for enthusiasts; although each chapter contains a quick behind-the-scenes sidebar about how a particular Pixar film came into being, on the whole the book doesn’t offer much content analysis beyond what discerning viewers will have already noticed for themselves. Velarde does pose some interesting questions—can a superhero’s courage be taught? What is a Christian’s proper stance on technology to avoid a polluted Wall-E world? But Pixar’s current corpus of fewer than 17 hours of film feels like a thin foundation for answering them. Each chapter closes with strong discussion questions that will be helpful for church groups, especially youth. (July)