Wall-E

Wall-E

Directed by Andrew Stanton (G)

A trash-compacting robot saves humanity and finds romance.

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The animators at Pixar have produced another “masterpiece” with Wall-E, said David Edelstein in New York. It’s 800 years in the future, and humans have abandoned Earth for the depths of space. The planet’s only inhabitant is Wall-E, a robot trash compactor on treads, whose job is to clean up the mess consumerism left behind. The visual imagery of this post-apocalyptic cartoon is “frequently flabbergasting,” but director Andrew Stanton tells a simple story about robot love and saving the human race. Pixar has an “uncanny gift for pushing things further without pushing too far,” said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. Wall-E is both “daring and traditional, groundbreaking and familiar.” In a quiet but clever manner, the film sends out a “powerful and even frightening environmental message.” The lonely Wall-E mourns the departure of humankind, obsessively collecting every last remnant of its civilization, especially old movies. The film itself is a triumph of old-fashioned moviemaking, said Richard Corliss in Time. It’s “a lot like an old silent picture,” in which Wall-E takes on the tramp role of Charlie Chaplin. Making a kids’ movie with a theme of ecological apocalypse and hardly any dialogue was a “gamble” for Pixar, but one that will win over generations of filmgoers.