Hundreds of years into the future, planet Earth has become a dump heap so huge that humans have fled into the stratosphere to be coddled by machines on a giant spaceship. The only signs of life back home are that unkillable bugger, the cockroach, and a trash cube with binocular eyes, forklift plates for arms and Caterpillar tracks to navigate the rough terrain. The thing is called a Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class — WALL•E — and its job is to clean up the mess of consumerism run amok. It can speak only in electronic grunts and sighs; when it is visited by a more advanced robot named EVE (for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), they communicate in one-word bursts.
The first half-hour of Andrew Stanton’s enthralling environmental parable is virtually wordless but has an almost symphonic aural richness, thanks to Ben Burtt’s intricate sound design. (He was also the voice of WALL•E.) In a movie that shows but doesn’t tell and whose leading characters are essentially mimes, Stanton clarifies for even the youngest viewer that machines have heart and soul. Less a trash collector than a trash connoisseur, WALL•E is programmed to be dedicated to his job. Yet he’s a lonely guy; he putters around the late, great planet Earth like a solitary child on an abandoned playground, or an oldster among his souvenirs. WALL•E’s special ache is his nostalgia for a life he never lived, for the intimate connection only humans enjoy. And when he finds EVE, he shows that machines can be, in the phrase from Blade Runner, more human than human.
All the major Pixar features, from Toy Story right through to Toy Story 3, have the means of astonishment. The company doesn’t make cute movies for kids; it tells universal stories through a graphic language so persuasive that children and adults respond with the same pleasure and awe. And WALL•E is the perfect culmination of John Lasseter’s first two-minute short, Luxo Jr., brought to its logical and thrilling romantic extension: toy meets girl.