Written and Directed by Andrew Stanton

Cast
Ben Burtt as WALL-E / M.O. (voices)
Elissa Knight as EVE (voice)
Jeff Garlin as Captain (voice)
Fred Willard as Shelby Forthright
John Ratzenberger as John (voice)

Rated G

Give Pixar, the animation studio that's Hollywood's biggest reigning brand name, their due:  the creators of Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and a half-dozen other iconic hits could easily keep putting cute faces on new inanimate objects, trotting them through familiar “I need a family” storylines and wait for the cash to roll in.  But instead, they've tried to branch out.  I wasn't an admirer of last summer's “quasi-adorable rat wants to be a chef” comedy Ratatouille, but it was definitely a major step outside the Monsters, Inc./Cars formula.  Now comes an even bigger gamble, an apocalyptic sci-fi story told in the mixed silent/vocal style of Chaplin's Modern Times and even featuring a smattering of live action.  WALL-E is trying to be a lot of different things at once, and they don't always jell, but it's a fascinatingly ambitious movie, at least as interesting to think about as it is to watch (take that, Kung Fu Panda!), and it's as visually stunning as anything in the Pixar catalog.

The film begins in a vast future cityscape of garbage.  We meet a robot, specifically a Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth class (WALL-E, voice of Ben Burtt) who prowls the wasteland gathering trash, compressing it into little blocks and stacking them into skyscraper-sized towers.  Over time, the machine seems to have developed a personality, becoming a packrat as well as a cleaner.  Among his treasures is an old VHS tape of Hello, Dolly he lovingly plays over and over.  Then, one day, two very important newcomers arrive in his world.  One is a tiny green plant growing amidst the trash, and the other is a tiny probe ship that lands with another robot in tow.  She's an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE, voice of Elissa Knight), and it's love at first sight, at least until she sees the plant, which triggers her programming to return to the Mother Ship.  WALL-E stows away and arrives on The Axiom, a ship where, we gradually learn, the remainder of humanity has lived for 700 years since evacuating the Earth.  The Axiom has become a fully corporate world devoted to consumption, and man has become a wildly obese species that floats around all day on hover chairs.  The Axiom's Captain (voice of Jeff Garlin) knows nothing about the ship's true origin and mission, but WALL-E's visit will begin a chain of events that will unlock old messages from Earth's last leader, CEO Shelby Forthright (Fred Willard, in the flesh) and change the destiny of the human race.

There's a fundamental clash of tones at WALL-E's heart that keeps it from being quite as great as a movie of its' ambition and craft should be.  On the one hand, it's a kid's movie, with cute robots, wacky humans, and bright colors.  Some of the more unpleasant implications of its' story (a life spent on a hoverchair sucking down Big Gulps would presumably be pretty short, and it's not clear how this human race continues to procreate) are neither explained away nor kept sufficiently out of view to be ignored.  You can argue that it's a tad hypocritical for a movie made by a merchandise-spewing wing of the mighty Disney corporation to wag its' finger at us about our society consuming itself to death, and the Axiom's world of people who spend their entire lives interacting with computer screens and buying stuff is interesting at first glance but not terribly deep.

On the other hand, the movie's silent vision of an abandoned Earth overrun with trash is awfully dark for some of the G-rated crowd, and director Andrew Staunton (making his follow-up to Finding Nemo) doesn't flinch from any of that.  It is, in fact, the apocalypse that WALL-E is best at, its' impact amplified by the fact that the movie's hero is a regular computerized Forrest Gump, never really understanding what's happening around him.  The three videos we see of Forthright (an utterly perfect Fred Willard) set a perfectly casual tone of blissful ignorance in the face of doom (remind you of anybody we know...?), even while their integration into the film (much like that of the Hello Dolly clips) is flawless.

And WALL-E does look amazing.  The robot himself is a masterful creation, clearly designed to serve a useful purpose that has long since ceased to matter, with his every utilitarian feature designed to double as an engine of expressive cuteness.  EVE is perhaps a bit much on the cuteness front, with her digital facial features and sleek, less interesting design, but a variety of defective machines on the Axiom are also good balances of the sweet and functional.  The ship is run by an AUTO pilot (voiced by the MacInTalk computer software) with sinister designs whose mixture of old-school nautical design and high-tech capabilities is quite nifty.  The first half is chock-full of amazing sights from the bleak future Earth to the glories of the solar system through which WALL-E rides as a stowaway.  The Axiom itself is more conventional animated movie stuff, but not unimpressive in its' own way, especially when the robots take center stage.

WALL-E doesn't say much, mostly just “WALL-E” and “EVE” with different inflections for different occasions.  That will drive some viewers crazy, but I actually found him to be a quite engaging silent movie-style character.  I can't say I was terribly impressed by the “romance” between the two robots, but WALL-E's puppy-like playfullness and loyalty are quite sweet.  A plot development at the end strains credibility in the name of a few cheap tears (and I actually didn't cry, but those who buy the robomance surely will).  Garlin makes the Captain likably courageous and good-hearted while the rest of the humans on the Axiom are pretty much off the rack (although Pixar buffs would riot if there wasn't a part for John Ratzenberger).  

WALL-E isn't one of the best Pixar movies:  it can't quite thread the needle between the dark and the uplifting as skillfully as the Toy Story movies and The Incredibles did.  But it does fire on all cylinders in short bursts and it's just about always entertaining.  Its' fast-paced action climax is exciting and fun, though you'd be forgiven for wondering what happened to that dark, moody silent movie about the lonely robot lost in a wasteland of trash.  But, whatever their ambitions, Pixar didn't become Pixar by sending the kids home unhappy.  I'm sure 800 years before the movie begins, Shelby Forthright's stores sold a lot of those electronic talking WALL-E toys...