In the 29^th Century, 700 years after humans abandoned their polluted planet, the last sentient being on Earth is Wall-E, a trash compacting robot – unless you count his oddly intelligent cockroach friend. Wall-E continues to compact trash and pile it into towers which rise higher than the remains of the skyscrapers of the metropolis which he calls home. Over the last 700 years, with the aid of a video tape of Hello Dolly and a curiosity spurred by the artifacts of human existence littering his living space, Wall-E has developed a personality – and a likable one at that.

The robot is obsessed with the concept of romantic love, which makes sense for a lonely soul who watches the same musical comedy every night. He practices courtship rituals based on the content of Hello Dolly and is fascinated by the concept of holding hands. Wall-E takes the form of a musical comedy with the introduction of EVE, a “female” probe ‘bot who lands on Earth and with whom Wall-E quickly becomes enamored. Music from Hello Dolly and elsewhere are important motifs throughout the film, and a “dancing” scene in space is the defining moment of the rather endearing romance between Wall-E and EVE.

The Hello Dolly connection is fascinating, as Wall-E explicitly implies that it is the film (read: popular culture) and the material goods of human society which teaches the robot concepts like romantic love and self-preservation. This raises the question of where we get such popular concepts: are they natural, or taught to us by society. The humans Wall-E encounters later on in the film have lost all sense of romantic love and other defining human characteristics, with the trash-handling robot being the sole remaining vestige of a lot of the qualities we would consider “human.” There is a nature vs. nurture argument here that the film does not make fully, but it has license for such light implications: it’s a musical comedy and at least ostensibly a children’s film.

Where the film does fall a little short is its attempted criticism of consumerism. The film carries a blatant “green” message and warnings about the way human society is headed, but the implicit criticism of the abundance of advertising and corporate greed jars with the very concept of a Disney-produced children’s film. The inside of the “L” train that took me to the theater was plastered in posters for Wall-E, and you can’t throw a stone in Chicago without it hitting Wall-E’s adorable face on a billboard or side of a bus. Television and the internet are awash with spots for the film, and I’m sure children’s networks have been bombarded with ads for the last few weeks, nullifying the film’s very specific slant against the concept of branding from a very young age.

That being said, the film basically has its heart in the right place, and its depiction of Earth as we left it a mere 100 years from now is heartbreaking – Wall-E’s collection of the legacy of humankind has a bittersweet feel to it. It’s difficult but amusing, even a little charming to think that in 800 years, all that may be left of us on this planet is sporks and Rubrik’s cubes. And cockroaches. The film makes much of the indestructibility of cockroaches and Twinkies, even having Wall-E’s pet cockroach live inside one of the Hostess snacks.

Soon after her arrival on Earth, EVE finds what she was looking for, organic life in the form of a small plant Wall-E had recently discovered among the trash. She stores it in an area comparable to a stomach and seems to go into some kind of gestation mode, an allegory for pregnancy that millions of children probably won’t understand until they re-watch this film several years down the road. Personally, I’m worried about some reactionary right-wing critics getting upset because EVE is “impregnated” before she and Wall-E “marry.”

What is also interesting about the relationship between Wall-E and EVE is that Wall-E seems to be in love before EVE is specifically gendered, making me wonder early on if Pixar had the audacity to depict a non-gender-specific relationship to its largely under-10 audience. It would have been daring indeed, but probably too risky and almost definitely less romantic. Her gender is soon established, and the film is better for it. A male-female romance is, like the film, classic, and whatever problems there may be with gender politics in children’s films (e.g., EVE has to give up her career in order to be with Wall-E), this film assumes a tone of such innocence and classicism that you can’t really fault it for not trying to break gender barriers. Wall-E may be set in the future, but it is a classic film, full of low- and high-brow entertainment, with jokes and a story everyone can enjoy.

This last quality can be attributed to almost all of Pixar’s films, which still remain the vanguard of American animation. Each one of them, with the possible exception of Cars, has been an instant classic on the level of older Disney films, incredible artistic achievements that also manage to entertain and succeed at the box office. While other companies (I’m looking at you, Dreamworks) attempt to appeal to both parents and children by pushing pre-junior high decency to its limit, Pixar finds a common denominator that is more in the school of Buster Keaton than Benny Hill.

And while other computer-animated fare attempts rather cynical, self-aware writing to “legitimize” itself (Shrek, Shrek 2, Shrek The Third), Pixar films are “legitimate” because they have no problem being sentimental in a world that has grown cold to old-fashioned Disney morals. They have made a brilliant film about a robot being in love with a robot, complete with unabashed romance and a tongue-out-of-cheek dancing scene, and they didn’t have to make fart jokes to distract me from a sloppy - and moreover lazy - romance, like so many other children’s films. No, Wall-E is better than that, better than most children’s films, and joins Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille among Pixar’s best and most original.