It was my brother who introduced me to WALL-E, eagerly showing me the first precious seconds of promotional footage months ago. My first thoughts? "Wow." Oh, and "That looks just like Short Circuit." When I was in first grade, I had my initial encounter with the binocular-eyed Number Five, and I've had a bit of a robot obsession ever since (not to mention continued cravings for Dr Pepper and an increasingly inappropriate crush on Steve Gutenberg).

WALL-E looks like he could be Number - make that Johnny - Five's little brother; he's short and squat, with a box for a middle into which he can place valuable objects, but those shiny, expressive eyes that say so much with a slight flicker of movement... Yup, it's the same spark of life. Beyond the physical similarity, WALL-E, like Johnny Five, is sweet-natured, endlessly inquisitive, fond of dancing and able to reassemble himself, though it's uncertain to what degree this is possible. None of this is to say that I'm calling the folks at Pixar copycats, only that from the moment I first laid eyes on the little rustbucket, I felt like I was meeting an old friend.

WALL-E is a different kind of Pixar movie. Heck, it's a different kind of movie period, one of the most visually stunning films I've ever seen, and one of the most riveting, despite the fact that there's probably less dialogue in it that in Bambi. It's a film whose most important characters express themselves almost entirely through noises and gestures; if you tried to listen in on it from the other room, you would have no idea what was going on.

Clunky, jittery WALL-E (sound designer Ben Burtt), who retracts within himself like a turtle every time he gets nervous, is easier to connect with than Eve (Elissa Knight), the sleek white probe sent to seek life on Earth, which humans abandoned 700 years earlier, but there is grace in the mismatched pairing that I heard one moviegoer compare to PC and Mac. From what little the previews showed, I went into the film thinking that it would primarily be a love story. In some sense this is true, and it's absolutely adorable to watch these droids conduct their unconventional courtship; a particular scene that takes place in outer space is one of the most beautifully choreographed love scenes I've witnessed.

But just as pervasive as the romance is the cautionary cloud that hangs over the whole film. We open upon an Earth where WALL-E, a 700-year-old mechanical janitor, spends his days rifling through mountains of junk, occasionally preserving artifacts he finds especially interesting. The rest he compacts into blocks that he uses to build massive towers. The idea, as shown through live-action video clips featuring the ironically-named Shelby Forthright (Fred Willard), CEO of Walmart-like super-chain Buy and Large, was that WALL-E and the rest of his clean-up crew would pick up the mess the humans made while the people enjoyed a luxurious five-year space station vacation. But one by one, the other robots ran out of steam until it was just one solitary trash collector still trying to make a dent in the debris of a departed civilization.

At first, it seems there will be nothing but droids for the whole film, saying each other's names over and over, relishing the sounds. But then dusty, depressing Earth is abandoned for the Axiom space station, and it is there that we see how humanity looks in 2700: grossly overweight and underfit, slow-witted and lazy, so plugged into their virtual realities that they don't notice the world around them, so susceptible to suggestion that they change the color of their uniforms when they hear the announcement that "blue is the new red."

Actually, given this movie's extreme science fiction context, this may be writer-director Andrew Stanton's way of playing with the notion of red-shirts. In this world, every person has essentially become a "red-shirt," rendered totally inconsequential in this droid-driven society. But all that is about to change, because Eve has returned to the station with a living plant that, like the dove's olive branch in the story of Noah's Ark, is a sign of hope. "I want to live," says the captain (Jeff Garlin) as if shaken out of a stupor, and the words of the John Denver song of the same name come flooding to mind. To grow, to see, to know, to share... To live. To stop being held captive by catastrophic consumerism. To return to the basics. To bellow, like the Jack-like shepherd that he never knew he could be, "WE HAVE TO GO BACK!"

Yes, in the midst of all its technological grandeur, this is a film that warns us not to let our inventions overcome us or to get so bogged down by material goods that we sacrifice all that is supremely good. It's a heavy message, and the opening scenes in which WALL-E wades through a world of waste, sick with loneliness, powerfully demonstrate the fact that things are a poor replacement for companionship and can, in fact, amplify one's isolation. But in the midst of all this searing social commentary is a nonstop barrage of visual gags that had me laughing aloud. Other droids show up here and there, most prominently a persnickety little fellow who's exceedingly aggravated by WALL-E leaving dirty streaks on the squeaky clean floor, and John Ratzenberger puts in his requisite appearance. The cast list for the film is shockingly short; the only other credited actors not previously mentioned are Kathy Najimy and Sigourney Weaver (who happened to be in Star Trek spoof Galaxy Quest) in small roles.

One of the things I always appreciate about Pixar movies is the way they reward audiences for staying while the credits roll. WALL-E boasts perhaps the most aesthetically astounding credit sequences I've ever seen, taking us through the growth of a civilization, with the depictions becoming more sophisticated as the culture progresses: cave paintings to pointilism to Van Gogh-like swirls of vibrant color. It's a short film in itself, and one that ought to have a place in history and art classes around the country. And speaking of short films, what would a Pixar movie be without a short to start things off on the right foot?

This time around it's a delicious display of digital wizardry put to perfect use with the dialogue-free tale of a magician's white rabbit who finds a dramatic way to sabotage his master's show after he is denied an enticing carrot. The slapstick builds to a full frenzy with laughs growing more and more plentiful, but even in this glorious gagfest there is a lesson to be learned.

I don't know how WALL-E will stack up against the rest of the Pixar films. With so few characters and so little dialogue, its merchandising possibilities seem limited - which is proper for a film coming down hard on conspicuous consumption, but probably not so good for the bottom line. Some children might find it hard to sit still for an hour and forty minutes of near-silence; some adults might too. It doesn't quite have the intimacy or deft comic touch of Toy Story or Monsters, Inc. And yet if you take the time to really peer intently through WALL-E's earnest eyes, you may just find that this robot movie is the most fundamentally human Pixar film of them all.

Recommended: Yes

Movie Mood: Family Movie