WALL-E: Sweet, Funny, Lovable. One of the three Best Pixar films

* * * * * (out of 5)

WALL-E is tied with Iron-Man for Best Movie of the Year, so far

(Equals Toy Story 2 and The Incredibles for Pixar Greatness)

Make sure you get to this movie early so you can see the hysterical opening cartoon--"Presto," about a mean magician and his magic rabbit.

Pixar scares me. The animated division of Walt Disney consistently makes some of the best cartoon movies of all time. It has never had a clunker in its 13 years of moviemaking. Even the films that fall short are still technically excellent. But I was nervous that they had lost a little something after Cars and Ratatouille. Both movies were fine, but left me feeling a little less than full. Like eating Chinese food.

Well, Pixar has come storming back with WALL-E. A beautiful, magical, funny, sweet, imaginative effort by the class of the business. From the man who wrote and directed Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton) comes this little film with Huge ideas. WALL-E is a trash-compacting robot put on Earth for 700 years to clean up the atmosphere-killing mess we left behind. In the film, it is now about 2700 AD and man has left the planet for an unending cruise around the stars. It was supposed to be a 5-year mission for the cleaning robots--"Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class"; but it became a project too huge in scope to complete.

The opening sequence is both dark and moving, as the "camera" flies helicopter-style over the ruined cities, with its Venus-like atmosphere and daily dirty sand storms that punish the landscape. I worried a bit that the animation might be too much for children, but once WALL-E shows up the squalor seems less threatening. But even then the humor can be dark. When the camera shows a clear vision of the city you realize that some of the high-rise buildings we've been looking at are just towers of garbage made from the compacted blocks by WALL-E.

It seems that WALL-E is the last of his kind and only has a cockroach to keep him company. That and his huge treasure trove of toys. Whatever bits of garbage WALL-E finds that interest him get packed in his trusty Playmate cooler and come back with him to his storage container hideaway. WALL-E doesn't speak, so the gentle laughs come when he tries to figure out where a spork should go, with his collection of spoons or forks? He's intrigued by a fire extinguisher, but when it knocks him on his back he throws it high on the trash pile.

This sweet creature with the inquisitive mind, loves to watch romantic musicals and keeps a tape of Hello Dolly in his front compartment to play while he does his work. When he gets home he takes his tractor treads off to rest his tired wheels. I'd say the best way to describe him is part ET, part cute puppy and part Charlie Chaplin as the tramp. As with all Pixar efforts there is more Looney Tunes-type humor in this movie than classic Disney fun. But WALL-E's world is forever changed when he meets a modern probe sent down by the Floating Earth's mother ship. The machine's sleek design and the wondrous way it flies through the air during its missions at first scares and intrigues our hero, but when he notices some kindness in its decidedly feminine lazar eyes and her giggle when tickled by his roach, he falls in love. She's obviously way smarter than WALL-E, completing his Rubik's Cube before he has a chance to show her his next toy. And is as intrigued by the singing and dancing humans on the Hello Dolly video as he is. You are drawn in by this mechanical romance and cheer these two would-be lovers on. The movie removes you from your theatre seat and plants you in this less than Brave New World and doesn't let go until the final credits.

As amazing as the opening half hour is on earth, things really take off literally when WALL-E stows away on the probe's transport vessel back to the mother ship far into space. That's when we get to meet human beings circa 2700 and finally hear dialogue. The depiction of the future of the human race is both hysterical and dead-on. How we let the machines take over our lives is less 2001 or Terminator than just real life.

Funnyman Jeff Garlin, Larry David's sidekick from Curb Your Enthusiasm, plays the ship's easy-going captain. His voice is already animated so playing a cartoon character is a natural for him. Cheers' Cliff Claven, John Ratzenberger, is back as a secondary character in a Pixar film. He is the only actor who's appeared in all of them. And in a stroke of genius, Sigourney Weaver voices the ship's computer, turning the tables on her role as Ripley in the original Alien.

When judging a movie you always have to ask yourself, "Is there any way this movie could have been made better?" And the answer here is emphatically, "No!" If only all movie studios were as creative and entertaining as Pixar.

The Freditor