We are at a point now for Pixar where the animation house that launched the 3-D cartoon revolution is beyond being simply the maker of quality family films. With Ratatouille and now WALL-E, Pixar affirms its place as a studio that makes exceptional films that just happen to be animated. Like Ratatouille, WALL-E operates far outside the normal parameters of what’s considered a “family film” and will probably succeed in spite of itself anyway. But these aren’t kids’ films. Sure, kids can go to them and there’s nothing thematically objectionable in them, but this is Disney grown-up playing with big themes and nuanced characterization.

WALL-E is the name for a robot, an anagram to be precise meaning Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-Class, whose responsibility is to collect and compact a world full of trash. As we see WALL-E trek across a desolate Earth, we see not only mountains of garbage, but several broken down WALL-Es, leaving one functioning trash compactor with binocular eyes, alone to clean the Earth with only a cockroach for company. The one side effect of WALL-E’s isolation seems to be the evolution of human-like emotion. WALL-E collects odd baubles from the trash piles and goes home at night to watch Hello Dolly, for what is presumably the 400,000th time. When he finds a singular, small plant in a discarded fridge, WALL-E just assumes it’s another trinket.

But the timely arrival of EVE proves otherwise. EVE, which stands for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, is on a mission to see if the possibility exists that Earth is capable of sustaining life once again. When WALL-E tries to impress her by showing her the plant he collected, he doesn’t understand the implications when EVE shuts down, sends out a homing signal and is retrieved by her spaceship. Naturally, WALL-E ends up stowing away, unable to let EVE go. They’re both taken to a ship called the Axiom, where all of humanity’s lived for 700 years, getting fat and lazy as they wait for the signal to return home.

What’s in some ways a simple love story about two robots from different generations surprisingly has a very strong message about environmental protection, consumer culture, technological dependency and proliferating corporate influence. A lot of these messages are likely to go over the heads of younger viewers who may look upon the idea of getting to float around all day in a hover chair with a holographic screen you never have to take your eyes off of as cool, not to mention probably not too far from the truth. From a more mature perspective, director Andrew Stanton is firing a shot off the bow of modern society. How far a trip is it from talking on your cell-phone in the car to being a Jabba the Hutt sized immobile object, travelling down the hall talking on your view screen with the guy sitting next to you?

And if you’re sensitive to the fidgetiness of children, be forewarned: pretty much the first half hour has a very I Am Legend feel to it as WALL-E trudges across the post-out of landfills Earth all alone with nothing but a his pet for company. No words and no dialogue save for the mechanized sweeps, creeps, and beeps as well as the soundtrack for Hello Dolly. R2-D2: The Movie is assuredly an apt description for the film, as most, if not nearly all, of the main characters are adorable little robots barely capable of monosyllabic words. The story definitely picks up when WALL-E and EVE get aboard the Axiom and have to battle company robots to insure the survival of the plant, but I wonder if many of the children in the audience hadn’t already been lost by that point.

Still, for me, WALL-E is a film of startling ambition and fantastical realization. I saw it in digital projection and it is astounding – the environment is so crisp and tangible. Stanton also tries something new by combining live-action with the CG animation. Now this is not Roger Rabbit territory mind you. The film uses original footage from Hello Dolly, which make sense because seeing Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau all cartooned up probably would have made for some unintentional hilarity. Fred Willard, though, also appears as the live action CEO of Buy ‘N’ Large, a Wal-Mart-esque corporation that will take over everything including, apparently, the US Presidency.

The complexities of the left-leaning themes don’t really dampen what is otherwise a standard, though obviously above average, Disney romantic adventure. It’s lively and colourful with a good sense of humour and fun, with the added secret sauce of a positive message on protecting the environment and the dangers of letting others control you as opposed to doing for yourself. Simply put, WALL-E is one of the best films of the year, animated or not. But it’s undoubtedly Pixar’s best since The Incredibles.

WALL-E, like all Pixar films, comes complete with a preceding short film by the animators. In this case, the short is called Presto and it is possibly one of the funniest cartoon shorts I’ve seem in a long while. About a turn of the century magician and his incorrigible rabbit, Presto features some impressive “physical” comedy while putting together the best antagonistic rabbit-human duo since Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. It’s almost worth the price of admission alone so long as I don’t have to see the trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahuaever again.