There's no other word to describe WALL-E besides "adorable." And it was expected, knowing the main character was a lonely and extremely curious robot. Writer and director Andrew Stanton melds together a creative blend of creative 3D work, real life cliches, and a memorable story that results in the cutest movie that this year has witnessed. I've already told myself that I'll be purchasing the DVD not only to watch it over and over again, but to also see all the special features for this three dimensional masterpiece. Our beloved folks at Pixar truly have done it yet again, developing a seamlessly perfect movie that will have you leaving the theater with a grin of happiness along with the satisfaction of knowing that your $10 went to intelligently creative and well-deserved hard work.

The premise of the story starts you off with WALL-E, (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) who is the last remaining functional robot on the futuristic trashed and abandoned planet Earth. His unfortunate and routine life consists of collecting and compacting mountains of trash into cubes and organizing the condensed garbage into towers of their own, but WALL-E seems to have no problem with it. His only companion on the abandoned Earth is a resilient cockroach who follows him around throughout his daily life. WALL-E lives the mundane life of any hard working robot, that is, until the day a futuristic spacecraft lands on Earth and releases an exploration pod, named EVE. Scared yet fascinated with the new arrival, WALL-E gradually becomes friends with EVE. However, after WALL-E innocently reveals to EVE that he found a living plant during one of his usual work days, EVE takes it and goes into a standby mode and awaits her ship to bring the plant back to her masters, the humans. Not wanting to be the only robot on the planet again, WALL-E naturally doesn't want EVE to leave, so when the ship arrives again he haphazardly follows her onto the it in hopes of simply being with her.



I won't go further in the plot; I really don't want to ruin anything for anyone. It's safe to say that Pixar has created a lovable story for all ages, appealing to young children, teenagers, and adults alike. The story is cute, almost making you feel sad for the lonely little robot, but it also keeps a funny and playful demeanor.

To be honest, the aspect of the movie that I found most enjoyable wasn't the 3D animation, (though the visuals are beyond incredible) but instead the fine job they did on the sound and music design. To start, the music was well made and fit the journey of WALL-E perfectly. The sound design and engineering for all the environments, characters, and motions were flawless. The voices for WALL-E (Ben Burtt) and EVE (Elissa Knight) are also very well selected (though I suppose you can't really go wrong when the characters are mechanical beings who can only say a few other words besides their own names). Either way, it was the tone and emotion that Stanton and the cast put into making their repetitive words have meaning towards the story and ultimately, giving each character a unique and unforgettable personality.

Pixar has always been on top of the game when it comes to their animated films including: Finding Nemo, Cars, and The Incredibles to name a few. WALL-E is no exception. The environments are realistic and more vibrant than ever, especially on the humans' vessel, Axiom. Texture design, animation, personality of the characters, are all impressively depicted through the visuals. Certain people will also find some of the movie's comical connections to real life objects entertaining as well. We especially enjoyed the Apple start-up sound when WALL-E charged his solar panels.

Additionally, the story of WALL-E contains underlying themes which are openly conveyed, including precautions to save the environment and also not to heavily rely on artificial intelligence to do everything for us. The bottom line is that WALL-E is a romantic and imaginative film that will leave you with a lasting impression of loneliness that has been happily cured. After getting connected with the settings and characters, I only wish that the movie had been longer. Disney and Pixar made a winner and WALL-E gets the first (of hopefully many) perfect movie ratings from us!