THE technical wizards at Pixar have come up with a magical, out of this world love story, distinguished by amazingly detailed visuals.
Director Andrew Stanton has created a masterpiece that tugs the heartstrings.
Set on a futuristic planet Eart
h ravaged by pollution, the human race has evacuated aboard giant cruiser spaceships, leaving behind an army of solar-powered droids to clean up the mess.
The last of these mechanised creations, WALL.E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), dutifully crushes all the refuse into neat blocks, collecting any interesting artefacts of 20th century life (Rubik's Cube, fire extinguisher, bubble wrap) to add to his personal collection.
Out of the blue, a mysterious mother ship touches down and spits out a sleek search-bot called EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), who has been programmed to seek out flora on the third rock from the sun.
What she discovers, however, is an out-dated Load Lifter with a lust for life and a thirst for adventure.
From the opening shots of satellite-encircled Earth and its dead continents of precariously stacked rubbish, WALL.E is a feast for the senses.
Every frame is crafted with love and with such jaw-dropping attention to detail. Not since Short Circuit's Number 5 has a robot seemed so human.
Kids will love the army of malfunctioning droids, including the compulsive-obsessive M-O (Microbe Obliterator), who is run ragged trying to clean up foreign contaminants that fall off WALL.E's rusty caterpillar tracks.
Stanton's futuristic film shoots for the moon and exceeds the hype.
You're unlikely to see a better picture this year.
The full article contains 279 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
