Wall-E (2008)

WALL-E  (2008)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Andrew Stanton
This movie opens with a futuristic vision of earth as a desiccated junk yard, a vast waste-disposal site whose only remaining inhabitants are a cockroach and a still-functioning trash compactor named WALL-E. WALL-E spends his days crushing piles of refuse into cubes and stacking those cubes into mountains. Evenings he spends watching an old VHS tape over and over again. Then one day a mechanized probe named EVE touches down, searching for signs of life, and WALL-E falls in love. The movie goes on from there, to a space station where the obese descendants of earth's last human beings live in lazy luxury, confined to mobile recliners because they're too weak and sedentary to walk. Another winning animated feature from Pixar, much of it wordless, borrowing equally from "Silent Running", "Hello, Dolly" and "2001". If you don't think there's a message tucked away in this fantasy about cute little robots in love, you're really not paying attention.