WALL-E

This is one warped cartoon. The title character is a little robot trash compactor (who owes a lot to Steven Spielberg’s E.T.) who continues to clean Earth 700 years after all of 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 what’s left of the human race (people who have become obese, machine-reliant messes). If anything, this film will get kids thinking about recycling, because it paints a rather bleak picture of the future (similar to the future portrayed in Idiocracy). It’s also yet another masterpiece from Pixar, makers of some of history’s 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, and there’s also interesting usage of Michael Crawford in Hello, Dolly! One of the summer’s best by far.