Movie Review - Wall-E

Wall-e

Director: Andrew Stanton

Voices: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Fred Willard, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy

Classification: A

Running time: 97 minutes

Rating: ****

How can you lose your heart so effortlessly to a robot? Well, he happens to be the last, but also cutest robot left on Earth, and seemingly the only moving thing out there. That's apart from his buddy, the cockroach, who is constantly running and ducking for his life.

"http://www.youtube.com/v/UblUO0LjPUg&hl=en&fs=1"

Wall-E is an industrious little chap. What we think is a city's skyscrapers at first glance, looked at more closely, are actually Wall-E's attempt at packaging the garbage. That's all we - the humans - left behind. And those of us who are left lounge around like beached whales in a space ship called Axiom, waiting until Earth shows signs of being habitable once again.

Not only does the Pixar team get it right, they take a light-year leap getting here from their last treasure, Ratatouille.

And as with that one made at precisely the right time, tapping into the zeitgeist, they've done it again.

Yep, they've given us the most adorable robot, someone who should easily bump everyone off their king-of-the-hill lists.

They also take a harsh look at our planet, the people who live on it and the way we have treated our world and bought into things rather than people.

It's taken the machines to show us the way it was, and one little machine in particular, who falls in love with all the things we have discarded so disdainfully. He gives them a new place in his special world of magic lights.

It's a gem of a piece and will have you sitting with the gentlest of smiles and softest heart throughout, whether you like animation or not. The Pixar guys know how to speak to everyone, not only the kids who like cartoons.

Their universe is much bigger than that. They give their stories heart and soul, and do it mostly without words.

Wall-E communicates with squeaks and other working noises rather than human speak. It's not about what he says, but how.

What they have done masterfully is to paint a dark picture of the apocalyptic world that we're heading towards and yet sugarcoat it with the most enchanting love story.

So while we're having loads of fun watching our hero lose his heart to a delicate creature from outer space, they hit us hard with how we're destroying our world and our humanity by living the way we do.