Review: 'WALL-E' quiet but masterfully done

Webster's Online Dictionary defines a masterpiece as follows: A work done with extraordinary skill; or a supreme intellectual or artistic achievement. I define a masterpiece as follows: Pixar's "WALL-E."

The geniuses at Pixar are the ones behind the ground breaking and critically acclaimed films "Toy Story," "The Incredibles," and (until Friday night) my favorite Pixar film, "Finding Nemo." "WALL-E" is their best film to date, a movie filled with such great characters and imagery that at times you forget that you are watching a cartoon.

Humans left an uninhabitable earth while Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth class (WALL-E) robots clean up the mess we have made of this tiny little planet we live on. Over a 700-year period all of the robots have broken down and left one lonely robot, our hero WALL-E, to do the rest of the work.

The 700 years of compacting trash alone with no one to talk to — save his pet cockroach — have given WALL-E something unique: a personality. He collects small tokens each day and has stored up a warehouse of toys to keep him busy. Then a strange ship lands to check for signs of life.

WALL-E falls in love with the probe robot, EVE. The scenes where he is trying to impress her with his toys are quite funny, and when he finally shows her a living plant he found, things get interesting. She immediately scans the plant, places it in her storage compartment and shuts down to standby mode, waiting for the spaceship to return and pick her up.

This Earth sequence, which lasts the first 45 minutes or so, is what sets this film apart from all the other Pixar films. They took a big risk with this movie, and I think it paid off in spades. There is NO DIALOGUE in the first 45 minutes of this film. Oh there are a few squeaks and sounds that come from the robots, their names mostly, but for the most part, no talking for the first part of the film. It was wonderful. If you are a fan of Pixar's short films that usually play before the feature presentations, most all of which have no dialogue, then you will have no problem with the fact that the first part of the movie is, for all intents and purposes, a silent film. However some of the young members of the audience might get a little antsy.

Stick with it, though. "WALL-E" hitches a ride on the departing spacecraft to stay with EVE as she is transported back to the humans. If the first hour of the film is all exposition, then the final hour is total action. Without spoiling too much, let's just say that when WALL-E finally encounters the humans, I was blown away with the direction Pixar takes the story. They did a great job of "not letting the cat out of the bag" so to speak, and I won't do that either by spoiling any more story elements.

Suffice it to say, that if you are tired of watching remakes of old movies and adaptations of old TV shows, and you have been waiting for an original movie to come from Hollywood, it has finally arrived in the form of a tiny trash compacting robot from Pixar.