The director, Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo), who co-wrote the movie with Jim Reardon, is a born entertainer. He keenly balances the resourcefulness of his characters with their dystopian circumstances. He makes you experience the film as a flight of urgent feeling, not an emotional teeter-totter. WALL-E himself is a victory of characterization and design over disbelief. He manipulates garbage with segmented arms that glide along tracks on either side of his square torso (that's where the trash gets compacted). His head resembles an old ViewMaster equipped with binoculars, and he can operate it like a jack in the box in charge of his own hinged neck.
If a robot moving on treads can have "spring in its step," WALL-E does. Becoming the last WALL-E left standing seems to have accelerated our hero's eagerness, inquisitiveness and hope. The movie swerves on whether you believe in his need for love and EVE's potential to fulfill it. Luckily, WALL-E is as lovable as Steven Spielberg's E.T., and EVE is a vanilla ice-cream cone of a robot, with alluring, glowing blue eyes. You root for them to connect, while you savor the complications.
For WALL-E, it's love at first sight. EVE is all about her mission - locating any sprout of greenery. Yet something in the way WALL-E looks at the world (and then at her) attracts her like no other robot. WALL-E's determination that she see him as her soulmate propels him into outer space and gives her the capacity to feel. The way Stanton has seen the movie whole, it's a contest between romanticism and pragmatism, waged as slapstick ballet.
Stanton has built WALL-E strictly for utility. The baldness of his bravery and his fright is equally, instantly funny. He charges right into the thick of chaos like a minitank. But he can retract his head with hair-trigger quickness back inside his torso: At different times, he's like courage or cowardice squared. EVE is more elusive and ambiguous. So when WALL-E unveils his beloved Earth artifacts to EVE and starts to win her over, the scene is as piercing as Elliott sharing his Star Wars action toys with E.T.
Everything WALL-E shows off is touched with feeling, including marvels as modest as packing bubbles. And that's the miracle of WALL-E: Human artifacts retain their humanity even after humanity has left. And WALL-E, now the ultimate human artifact, retains more personality than anything or anyone else. His acquisition of attributes such as love and loyalty ultimately catalyze EVE to sustain her quest even after her computer master tries to short-circuit it.
