WALL-E

I went into WALL-E blind--hurry and do the same thing while you can. The movie contained robots. That I knew. I knew, also, that the lead robot was very cute, and had heard from reliable sources that its voice was provided by the guy who played R2-D2. And it was Pixar, which meant it'd be worth seeing. So I went.

Sorry, but I won't be able to pen a humorous take-down or contrarian rant about this movie. WALL-E is close to a masterpiece. Its first act, at least, is perfect cinema, and I can understand how the movie loses some people, or how it could seem overlong. A lot of that is the fault of Andrew Stanton and crew for creating an opening sequence that is at turns beautiful, tear-jerking, funny (never side-splitting, but never less than cute), and compelling. We open on planet Earth in an unspecified year. Something is wrong with the planet, straightaway. From space it looks brown and gritty. There's grey detritus where there should be water. We get closer, and the skyline of New York is doubled by massive, skyscraper-shaped piles of garbage. A robot labeled "WALL-E" skids along the ground, playing a showtune on his built-in tape deck, picking up trash. The facts rat-a-tat out with no dialogue: Some time ago the planet got so polluted and over-consumed that the humans all died out. Or left. Or something.

Without spoiling the rest of the movie (and I haven't even discussed the emotional core that made me tear up about, oh, seven times), I can say that this isn't a new plot. E.M. Forster wrote "The Machine Stops" nearly 100 years ago and showed readers a menacing future where humanity doomed itself by handing over its fate to computers. It's been more than 50 years since Ray Bradbury wrote "There Will Come Soft Rains," about a futuristic house that purrs and prepares for the day for a family that's long been exterminated by some kind of war. There is not much new about WALL-E except for the brilliant animation, which is the least surprising part of the whole endeavor. But damn, does it ever work.