WALL-E

This is one warped cartoon. The title character is a little robot—who owes a lot to Steven Spielberg’s E.T.—a little trash compactor who continues to clean Earth 700 years after all the people left due to pollution. When a probe robot arrives, and they discover plant life, the robots are whisked into space to a ship that has been housing the remainders of the human race, who have become obese, machine-reliant messes. If anything, this film will get the kids thinking about recycling because it paints a rather bleak picture of the future (actually a little similar to the future portrayed in Idiocracy). It’s yet another masterpiece from Pixar, makers of some of history’s all-time best animated fare. The first half of director Andrew Stanton’s film contains next to no dialogue, and it doesn’t need it. The wondrous visuals do a fantastic job of telling the story. The part involving the humans is actually rather twisted and funny. There’s also an interesting use of Michael Crawford in Hello, Dolly! One of the summer’s best by far.