.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Keep up with me here. Toy Story, Monsters Inc., A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille. All 3-D animated features, all monster blockbuster hits, all from the Pixar Studio Production Company. It's a track record without an equal.

So to say that expectations were out of this world for their new summer release WALL-E, would be an understatement. Add to the mix that Andrew Stanton who directed and wrote Pixar's Finding Nemo was at the helm and you can just imagine Disney head honcho Robert Iger taking the pillows off his bed so that he can roll around in all the money they are about to make starting June 25th.

WALL-E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is a big-lensed cute robot who has spent hundreds of years collecting and compacting garbage left behind by the vacated humans on earth in the year 2700. His existence is that of a lonely working-class machine. The only other presence on earth is a cockroach (thank Heavens, as I was afraid that Paris Hilton might be the only one to survive an earthly disaster). The two have forged a relationship without the use of words and their friendship is as real as anything I have seen in live-action films.

WALL-E's life changes when he meets EVE, a scientific search robot that has been sent to earth to look for organic life. WALL-E falls hard-drive over rivets for the new visitor and introduces her to his world of knick-knacks and repeated viewing of Hello Dolly! that he happens to have on VHS cassette.

But when WALL-E shows EVE a sprout to which he has found growing in the ground, EVE immediately takes the plant and then goes into shut-down mode awaiting her Mothership to come back and retrieve her from the successful mission.

When the Mothership does arrive and EVE is taken away, WALL-E goes on an adventure to both save EVE, save himself, reconnect with his love and inadvertently give the human race hope once again for a future on earth.

WALL-E is a stunning achievement and will end up on many (including my own) Best Of lists at the conclusion of the year. The visuals are absolutely breathtaking and WALL-E provides more of a three dimensional character than Mark Wahlberg did in The Happening.

It's incredible how Andrew Stanton breathes life into the character and has his audience emotionally attached to box with eyes. WALL-E looks like a mix between E.T. and the robot from Short Circuit, but he packs the emotional wallop of both 80's films as well.

There is so much fun to have in WALL-E that I could argue the film to be one of my first five star reviews in years. If not for the human characters, I probably would have (and 'No', I am not referring to Fred Willard who is the first live character to appear in a Pixar major motion picture). I am referring to the fat, lazy and unidentifiable characters voiced by Kathy Najimy, Jeff Garlin and John Ratzenberger. These characters were interesting, but gave the film more of a Saturday afternoon cartoon feel while the rest of the movie ends up being one of the best sci-fi films….ever.

Small complaint indeed. But humans take second joystick to the robots in WALL-E. The rag-tag team of malfunctioning robots that are freed and come to the aid of WALL-E are classic and a small robot whose directive is simply to clean up contaminants is so cute you want to grab it and pet it like a kitten.

There is a moral message in WALL-E. One that surrounds keeping our world free of junk so that we can sustain life generations upon generations from now. It is An Inconvenient Truth for the grade-schoolers and although adults will more closely understand the message, it is not belaboured or pushed down our throats.

I can't say enough about WALL-E (ironic comment since WALL-E contains hardly any words in the script itself). It was a fantastic adventure for all ages and is maybe the best Pixar film since Toy Story.