WALL-E
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Ever since Toy Story, our cinema screens have been awash with pixel-perfect CGI animations and usually I get the feeling they just replace one set of cutesy characters with another - swap penguins for pandas, zoo animals for woodland critters, toys for cars etc and you’re good to go. So I tend to be a bit skeptical whenever there’s a new Pixar or Dreamworks extravaganza on offer, but luckily there’s more than enough warmth, enchantment and humour in Wall-e to cure even the most skeptical of skeptics. To be honest, for the opening third of the movie, I was so thoroughly absorbed and involved in the tale of this cute robot (yes, he is cute - he may owe much design-wise to No. 5 of Short Circuit fame, but he’s almost certainly the cutest robot in cinematic history) doing his best to clean up the Earth’s trash with only a faithful cockroach for a buddy, that I could easily forget that it was all animated. All the more remarkable for the fact that there’s no dialogue at that stage, and when the mysterious Eva turns up, verbal exchanges largely amount to the two new friends and, as it turns out, budding romantics, calling each other by name. It’s almost a shame there has to be more to the story, with our (cute) hero transported to the stars and a lot of running around, frolics and drama (featuring even more robots, including a cute cleaner robot with a touch of OCD and a ship’s computer voiced by Sigourney Weaver) on board a sprawling star-liner where all the humans have been vegetating into mobile couch-potatoes. And as with a lot of Pixar output, it’s the humans that are really the only letdown, a problem amplified in this case by the decision to show us live-action people in some archive footage. It’s something of a challenge bridging the gap between Fred Willard and the evolved blobs, and, unfortunately, it jumped me out of the action somewhat and in many ways I’d have been happier if they’d left the humans out of it - off-stage, as it were - and confined themselves to their somewhat Silent Running-inspired love story - minus Bruce Dern. Fortunately, once you’ve adjusted to the whole blobby humans scenario, it’s all entertaining stuff, with a great deal of energetic rushing around, a colourful warning about the dangers of obesity and a strong message about the evils of corporations. Wall-mart, perhaps? All leading to a genuinely heart-wrenching scene back on Earth in which if you do not have a lump in your throat, you might want to check whether you are in fact a robot.