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Sunday, August 31

WALL-E

Enter the protagonist robot, WALL-E. Waste Allocation Load Lifters, Earth-class - WALL-Es for short and there appears to be only one left in working order on a ravaged Earth centuries in the future when humans have long abandoned the absymal planet, leaving behind this cute little robot with sad, binocular eyes to sweep up the landscape. Except for the company of a friendly cockroach, he spends his days alone sorting through trash heaps making detritus into cubes and the hopeless job of piling them on, we realize with a start, what seem to be skyscrapers are in fact ziggurats of our leftover junk. At night, WALL-E puzzles over his prized possessions - a Rubik's Cube, a rubber duck and watches a videotape of the musical "Hello, Dolly!" obsessively returning to the Michael Crawford love song "Out There" in his feeble effort to understand what was once life on earth. As you expect, WALL-E has an inner yearning for a relationship with something, the kind of perfect love he views in a film he found amidst the garbage. His hopes are resolved when a spaceship comes to drop off a fellow robot, this one in search of life. After overcoming his fear of the threatening creature, WALL-E gets to know her as EVE and takes her back to his home to show off his collections found amongst the waste. Little does he know that EVE or Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator is looking for plants - evidence that Earth is ready for recolonization. By chance, WALL-E has just turned one up, a delicate shoot he's repotted into a shoe. Fascinated with the idea of something living, WALL-E shows the plant to EVE. She scans the plant and realizes that it is a sign of life on the planet and before he reacts, she places it under her robot shell and goes into a period of hibernation giving him a cold shoulder. Disappointed, he ties her to a string and drags her along wherever he goes until one day the spaceship comes back for her. Our hero, in hot pursuit chases the spaceship into the unknown where a familiar rambunctious action scene follows. Even if you are not one for comic flicks, this one leaves you with a feeling of catharsis although the sad irony of discarded popcorn and coke cans around the seats fail to escape you.