Don't walk but run to see WALL-E

COMING home after watching a preview of WALL-E at Liverpool's FACT cinema my girlfriend asked me which was my favourite bit. After thinking for a moment I said: All of it.

I’m not often given to falling in love with a film at first sight but Pixar’s latest (they’re the guys who did Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Ratatouille) is hard to resist.
When I say Wall-E concerns the lonely life of a robot who has spent 700 years cleaning up a garbage strewn Earth all by himself, that the first half has virtually no dialogue (except Michael Crawford singing on a VHS of Hello Dolly), and that humanity has abandoned the planet, you may think here’s one to avoid.
But you’d be missing the biggest treat of the summer blockbusters.
The Pixar team have certainly made it hard for themselves - no hilariously confused toy astronauts or stoner turtles here - but in WALL-E - a cross between E.T and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit who talks like R2-D2’s dim-witted cousin, they have crafted perhaps their most sympathetic character ever.
His antics as we follow him around a day in his life are both hilarious and sad.
Pixar's mastery of physical comedy keeps us laughing while WALL-E trips over, crashes into and gets squashes by various bits of garbage he's trying to tidy away.
But his garbage-collecting hobbies and best friend, a cockroach, can’t make up for the loneliness our little hero feels after all the other Wall-E’s have broken down.
To add to his troubles in obsessively watching a 1960s musical for hundreds of years the little guy has broken his programming and yearns for love.
That we get just what he’s thinking is testament to the animators.
Sure, the garbage Earth is beautiful in its own unique way, the computer generated images ape the movement and depth of field of a real camera, and everything on screen is eye-bogglingly well-designed and smoothly animated.
But their real triumph is in getting us into the head of a character with no mouth, speech, or facial features beyond some telescope eyes.
Pixar have always used their technical skills to serve the story, not the other way around, which is why the master manipulators make your heart go out to the little guy, without a word having to be uttered.
It’s almost a shame when a new character arrives (lady robot EVE) and Wall-E leaves Earth with her where we find out just what has become of his human masters.
But by the time the final reel is over we’ve witnessed some hilarious jokes, frenetic action, a lot of what the censors call ‘mild peril’, and some surprisingly adult references to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and Brave New World.
I’m not ashamed to say I had a lump in my throat several times and unless you’re made of metal you will too.
Wall-E opens nationwide on Friday July 18.

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