Wall-E is the last of his kind, a trash collection robot left behind when Earth had become such an ecological nightmare that the human race was forced to abandon the planet. He spends his days stuffing garbage into his midsection and compacting it into tidy little cubes, which he piles up in heaps that are nearly as tall as the abandoned skyscrapers.
He has developed a fascination with certain types of human junk -- Christmas tree lights, plastic forks, a Rubik's Cube -- which he neatly sorts into storage bins in the large truck that serves as his home. Wall-E spends hours on end with his most valuable possession, an old video of Hello, Dolly from which he's learned all he knows about human interaction and love.
Wall-E is a little nebbish of a robot (surely the resemblance to Woody Allen -- the large eyes with heavy frames, the skinny neck -- is no accident), so we don't really ever expect him to find the love he seems to crave. But another robot does eventually show up, arriving on a gleaming spaceship. She is Eve, and it is her periodic mission to check Earth to see if the planet has recovered to the point that it can support vegetation.
The first act of Wall-E is virtually a silent movie, and it's gorgeously done. Wall-E and Eve are astonishingly communicative given their limited features; Eve is a particular animation challenge, being a solid egg shape with two glowing blobs of blue light for eyes.
The two robots do eventually leave Earth, and we find out what has become of humanity. This second half of the movie is a lot more conventional than the first, and a bit less satisfying. With the entrance of people into the movie comes the first significant dialogue, and there are fine voice performances from Jeff Garlin as the spaceship captain, Kathy Najimy and John Ratzenberger as a pair of typical occupants forced to adjust to new circumstances, and Sigourney Weaver as the ship's computer.
I enjoyed Wall-E very much, though I don't find it quite as satisfying as the very best Pixar movies (for me, that would be Ratatouille and The Incredibles); still, saying that a movie is "only" as good as Finding Nemo or Toy Story is high praise, indeed.
What keeps the movie from joining that top rank? I found it to be somewhat chilly and emotionally removed; the characters aren't as inviting or as engaging as they might be. Still, like all of Pixar's movies, it's beautifully animated, and the storytelling is always clear and efficient. Wall-E is a very good movie; it's just not a brilliant one.
Preceding the movie is a new Pixar short, Presto, a very funny tale about the battle of wits between a magician and his rabbit, an heir to the Bugs Bunny tradition of mischievious revenge. It's an absolute delight.
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