I went to see the latest animated movie from Pixar last weekend called "Wall-E".

Wall-E? What's a Wall-E? You may asking yourself - well, Wall-E is a sort of mobile trash compactor - his name is an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class. It's set in the future (year 2700 in fact) in which planet Earth has been abandoned by the humans who polluted it with toxins and trash. The movie opens with a view of a silent city with tall skyscrapers. A close up shot shows that the skyscrapers are all constructed out of garbage, neatly compacted into squares piled up on top of one another!

In other words,Wall-E is a robot who compacts trash and places it in piles. He has one friend, a cockroach, who's the only thing left living (cockroaches can survive almost anything), His little world is turned upside down when a sleek, white robot named Eve arrives with a special mission - to find life on earth.

The Good News

The whole movie has a great look. Plenty of pats on the back all 'round. Like so many of the Pixar animated films, it's bright and cheerful, but not too cartoony and a tiny bit realistic at the same time. I fell in love with cute little Wall-E the moment I saw him; I felt a curious affection towards the little guy.A lot of thought must have gone into his design. Considering this is a hunk of tin it was amazing how his body language and 'facial" expressions with the binocular-like video cameras that are his eyes were. You just want to pick him up and squeeze him!

The Bad News

The movie feels weirdly, and disappointingly, out of whack, something that starts out as one thing and ends up being another. The first half hour of "Wall-E" is basically wordless, and left me speechless the last hour is essentially full of preachy words that left me speechless but for different reasons and not in a good way.

I think the biggest mistake it made was to create a G-rated animated movie loaded with "important issues", a frankly depressing look at the future. It felt like "Wall-E" was programmed more for critics and environmentalists rather than families looking to have a good time at the movies. But don't let that stop you from buying the kiddies Wall-E mugs, T shirts, action toys and underoos now people!

All I kept thinking midway through is "just give me back the sweet love story between Wall-E and Eve".When it comes to the fate of humanity onboard the Axiom (SideNote:the word axiom is a math terms meaning something that is “taken for granted") I gotta be honest with ya folks I don't care! Personally, I really don't want to see a movie that lays such a grim and heavy message about us being wasteful and destructive humans after dropping almost $30 on tickets for me and my family and another $30 at the concession stand!

I can’t believe all the gushing done by other reviewers.The over the top preachy-ness reminds me of "Happy Feet", another movie not worthy of the all the admiration it received. Yeah I said it, deal with it!

I wanted the first half of the film back, with nothing involving other characters. I enjoyed the characters of Wall-E and Eve so completely that I would rather have just spent the entire time in the theater just watching them. Gotta respect that.

EndNote: Make sure you come on time, the movie opens with “Presto,” a really great new Pixar short about a magician and his rabbit.

Rated: G

Wall-E Trivia:

-The concept of Wall-E actually dates back to Pixar's very beginnings - even before "Toy Story" was produced!

- Most of the robot characters are voiced by only one person- Ben Burtt through mechanical sounds that he created.

- First time a Pixar feature-length film used live-action.

-The film contains numerous references to Apple computers: when Wall-E is fully charged by the sun, he makes the same "boot up" sound that most of Apple's Macintosh computers have made since 1996. The design if Eve was inspired by the iPod.Also Wall-E watches his favorite movie (Hello Dolly)every night on the screen of an iPod.

-When Eve is first scanning the planet, she scans the Pizza Planet truck from "Toy Story".

- The plant logo on Eve's chest is the same logo used by Disney Epcot's The Land pavilion up until 2005.

- The cockroach chirps were created by speeding up the sounds of a raccoon.

- The film is dedicated to Justin Wright, a 27 year old Pixar animator who died of a heart attack.

- This is the first Disney/Pixar movie not to open with the Pixar-animated castle logo.

-The name of the ship that the humans are living on is called the "Axiom." In logic and math an axiom is something unquestionable or taken for granted.