An Out of This World Famil-E Adventure
The opening shot is of downtown New York City. Only these aren't normal buildings but towers of blocks of trash. WALL-E (voiced by beeps and Ben Burtt), our hero, is a glorified trash compactor who has made the mountains. As we follow him across the vast landscape, we learn that he is the last of his kind and that he is indeed on earth. Humans fled years ago because they bought into the commercialism of the Buy-n-Large stores that ruled the earth. The resulting garbage overran the planet.

But WALL-E is not a mindless robot. He is curious and collects bits and pieces of things that are still intact. At night, he takes these to his bunker where they are on display a la Ariel. His only companions are a cockroach and a video tape of Hello Dolly.

Into this world comes Eve (voiced by beeps and Elissa Knight). Eve is another robot but much more high tech. She is on a classified mission. WALL-E immediately falls for her. So much so, in fact, that when the spaceship returns to collect Eve, WALL-E tags along. Suddenly, the two find themselves caught up in an adventure with the future of mankind at stake. Can they save humanity?

This isn't quite Pixar's best, but it is very good. I mean, we've got robots who hardly speak as our main characters, yet we are completely rooting for them. And even though the dialogue is limited, these robots have personality. But it was the limited dialogue that got to me. I got tire of long stretches where the only words we heard were Wall-E and EVE calling each others' names, especially during the climax.

There are few characters here. Frankly, that makes sense due to the extra effort it takes to develop character and story without dialogue. And the story was a tad slow in spots, but it usually picked up about the time I was ready to move on.

There are some many cute and funny moments in the film. While most of these will appeal to the whole family, even those that kids wouldn't get are appropriate for all ages.

The animation is spectacular throughout, but this is especially true once we leave earth. There are some space shots that took my breath away.

There are several morals lurking just below the surface of the film. And you know what I appreciated abut them? They lurked just below the surface. Oh, they're hard to miss, but the story never stopped to lecture us.

While slow at times, I had a smile on my face by the time the film was over. And really, that's what it is all about.

A Work of Staggering, Simple Beauty
Wall-E, at the very least, is easily Pixar's best effort. Though in actuality, the highest and most accurate praise I can give this humble little film is this: It's not only the best animated feature since The Lion King, it also earns an easy place as one of the top five animated films of all time.

Wall-E balances an innocent romance with a story about realization, companionship, and heroism in a way that will both entertain and challenge children, all the while completely engaging adults in both the story and the potent but never pushy social message. The movie manages multiple laugh out loud moments with minimal dialogue, and instead allows the robots to communicate with each other and humans with robotic sounds that are so well done that they're as understandable as any real speech used in the movie. The lead robots, Wall-E and EVE are great characters with a story that can and will warm your heart and glaze your eyes one minute and make you crack up the next. There are hardly any B-Plots except recurring jokes (the "Foreign Contaminate" robot bit comes to mind), so pretty much the full length of the movie is devoted to Wall-E's epic journey to restore humanity on Earth and, moreover, to hold EVE's hand.

The design of the robots in this movie is nothing short of genius. They are highly emotive and more expressive than most of the humans, though it's clear that Pixar made the effort to achieve a balance, making sure that they're expressive but also retain the man-made machinery look. And it was a complete success. There are many scenes of simple staggering beauty here, such as Wall-E, fire extinguisher in hand, flying with EVE through open space. From the regular character design, to the deep and starry sky, to the buildings, to the fast paced action scenes, to the sleek look of EVE, to the masterpiece that is Wall-E himself, Pixar completely and totally outdid themselves.

Wall-E is an ambitious idea that has been fully realized in an unabashed masterpiece of a film.

10/10 Classic.

dvd skips
I love the movie, but this dvd skips straight out of the box. There's not a scratch on it and it skips on both of my dvd players.

Best Pixar movie ever
I cannot describe Wall-e in just few words.Before watching this film,I thought this was going to be a classic Pixar movie,just fun and entertaining.But Wall-e has already passed that line.This movie is very clever in a sense that it is close to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

A Return to Form
First, the feature; Wall-E continues Pixar's impeccable habit of making great movies. They slipped a bit with Cars, but many a studio would kill for Cars to be the low point in their filmography. Ratatouille and Wall-E makes the second time Pixar has released back-to-back masterpieces, and, I think, ultimately, Wall-E may prove their best film.

It is certainly the most unusual of the Pixar movies; The first thirty minutes or so are nearly a silent movie. The two main characters are machines who are capable of saying almost exclusively their own names and uninterpretable sounds. Yet somehow it works. The animation is spectacular, as always. Besides the technical aspects, how stunning it all looks (this movie makes the definitive case for upgrading to Blu-Ray, though I've not bought a Blu-Ray player and will be enjoying my copy on DVD), the movie excels in emoting through body language. Wall-E cannot speak, but his body moves, particular his "eyes," in such ways that you always know exactly what he's feeling. It's stunning to watch. And that this movie is so unusual in some ways makes it Pixar's most essential movie. It does something very old in an entirely new way.

I could throw plaudits at the movie all day, but I would be remiss if I did not mention the packaging. The last two Pixar DVD releases have been a bit of a disappointment. The magnum opus was Monsters, Inc. The myriad bonus features were fascinating, engaging, and I still don't think I've watched all of them, though lord knows I've tried. Cars and Ratatouille were the only single-disc releases in the Pixar catalog, and their special features were lacking that certain something Pixar usually brings. I am beyond thrilled to report that the Wall-E 2-Disc set (the third disc contains the Digital Copy, and is not actually a DVD) is a return to fine form. The special features go in-depth about the making of this magnificent movie, and there's enough here to keep you watching for quite some time after the movie ends.