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PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 6/26/08)

WALL*E's world is a dystopia bleaker than many science-fiction movies and books targeted towards adults. He's alone on an abandoned, razed earth where he goes about his duties of collecting and compacting the trash that covers the land. Occasionally he finds gems like a spork or a Rubik's cube that he takes home, a cozy nook strung with Christmas lights where he watches Hello, Dolly! and practices his dance moves. His best friend is a roach.

His little world is turned upside down when a sleek, white robot named Eve arrives on earth with a special mission — to find life on earth. WALL*E inadvertently helps her when he gives her a plant growing in a boot as part of his attempt to woo her. With her mission accomplished, a spaceship comes back to get her, and the lovelorn little guy hijacks a ride. He ends up on a cruise ship full of earthlings. What was supposed to be a 5-year cruise turned into 700 years, and the vacationers have grown obese and complacent; they look like giant babies in onesies and rarely move from their floating recliners.

Here's where things get (somewhat) serious. The captain (voiced by Jeff Garlin) gets recorded messages from the CEO-cum-President (Fred Willard) who once ran the company that ruined earth and sent the humans on their vacation into space. Naturally, he implores the captain to "stay the course." There are creepy robots with their own agendas, imprisoned misfit robots, scary robot police, and more. It's an entire society with its own agenda that goes undetected by the humans until it's almost too late.

What saves WALL*E from its overbearing political message is the sweetness of the protagonist and how he wins over Eve and accidentally saves the world — and of course, the design and animation. He chirps and coos and eventually learns to intone "Eeeevaaah," thanks to Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt, who has worked on every action classic you've loved, from Star Wars to Indiana Jones. Just watching WALL*E putter around earth by himself, crushing trash into neat cubes and listening to his homemade tape of the Hello, Dolly! soundtrack is mesmerizing.

Pixar took a chance with WALL*E and a nearly silent robot hero, but I think the bigger chance it took was to create a G-rated animated movie loaded with Important Issues, a frankly depressing look at the future, and a paranoid vision of an robot uprising. When it works, it really works, but it's debatable whether its target audience will really enjoy anything more than the nifty robots. Which is fine, too. Robots are pretty cool.

— Jenni Miller