A computer-animated kids movie featuring a rusty robot that hardly talks, "WALL•E" has more to say than most other films this year.
This G-rated movie from Pixar Animation Studios ("Finding Nemo," "Ratatouille" and all the other really good ones) offers a touching robot romance, visuals as artful as they are state-of-the- art, and vital messages about environmental and personal health.
Directed and co-written by masterful storyteller Andrew Stanton ("Nemo," "Cars"), "WALL•E" starts in a place that's desolate yet gloriously rendered: an Earth covered in refuse and uninhabitable by humans. The people split 700 years ago, leaving only WALL•E, a trash-compacting robot, and his cockroach pal.
The film's photo-realistic animation, depicting structures built from compacted refuse standing before a brownish horizon, is so lifelike that you wonder whether it's really animated. Such authenticity is key to making a largely wordless robot and cockroach appear expressive. Were the backdrop more cartoonish, it would spoil the illusion.
Instead, the characters are emotive enough to seem almost human. The roach, for instance, paces back and forth when he's worried, and he burrows in the filling of a snack cake whose preservatives have ushered it undiminished through seven centuries. On second thought, the snack-cake thing is still pretty roachlike.
In sifting through garbage every day, WALL•E finds items to treasure, attaching value to them unrelated to their former monetary worth. Discovering a diamond ring, he pitches the jewelry and keeps the case. He likes the way it snaps shut.
WALL•E's most treasured possession is a VHS tape of the 1969 movie musical "Hello, Dolly!" From this tape, he has gained an appreciation for show tunes and some humanlike romantic ideas. When he spots a highly advanced female robot named EVE who has just arrived from space, he's instantly smitten.
Since EVE is quick to shoot whatever she doesn't understand, this courtship entails lots of misadventures and strewn rubble. But WALL•E, his reactions voiced in a series of blips and squeals by the picture's sound designer, Ben Burtt, remains committed throughout.
Eve inspires WALL•E to speak, or at least to introduce himself and learn her name. He pronounces hers "Eva" in a tremulous voice that makes him sound like E.T.
He looks a bit like the extraterrestrial as well. But rather than detract from the character, this resemblance enhances WALL•E's lovability – serving, like a Rubik's Cube the robot has scavenged, as a cultural touchstone for adult viewers.
Kids will just enjoy WALL•E's winning personality. The sweet schlub pursuing the sleek beauty, he shows a lot of self-confidence. He positively beams when demonstrating his garbage-compacting skills to Eve – it's just hard to tell through all the dirt and rust.
The quick-draw EVE turns out to be quite multifaceted, thanks in part to Elissa Knight's nuanced voice work. And nuance is hard to come by when one's dialogue consists almost exclusively of the name "WALL•E." But Knight lends the line different inflections, and different meanings, every time out.
When "WALL•E" takes off in a different direction – it involves humans, but the details are too good to be given away here – it becomes a cautionary tale focused on preserving personal as well as planetary health.
For adults, some of this content might seem too obvious. But when aiming lessons at kids, sometimes you have to swing for the fences.
Most 6-year-olds, after all, haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth." But they will see "WALL•E" and perhaps come away from it educated as well as entertained.
WALL•E
4 stars
VOICE CAST: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Fred Willard and Sigourney Weaver
DIRECTOR: Andrew Stanton
WRITERS: Stanton, Jim Reardon and Pete Docter
DISTRIBUTOR: Disney
THEATERS: Century (Downtown Plaza, Folsom, Greenback, Laguna, Stadium), Regal (Auburn, El Dorado Hills, Natomas, Placerville), UA Roseville, Sacramento Drive-in, Colfax, Colusa, Holiday Davis, State Woodland
103 minutes (including the short film "Presto")
Rated G
Call Bee movie critic Carla Meyer, (916) 321-1118. Hear her discuss the week's movies at 4:40 p.m. on Fridays on NewsTalk 1530 (KFBK). Read her blog at www.sacbee.com/21q.
