(Minor spoilers follow: consider yourself warned.)

One thing I’ve really enjoyed about Pixar’s movies are the shorts they show beforehand.  I think the one this time around, Presto, is probably their best to date — lots of physical comedy in the Loony Tunes vein.

WALL·E itself is also a step up from their previous work, though I think more in a technical sense than a storytelling one.  Not only have the animators given a (mostly) voiceless, boxy robot character and emotion, but they appear to have overcome a major issue with CGI: dirt.

Yes, dirt.

I’ve heard that every Pixar film has at least one major technical challenge: in Monsters, Inc. it was hair, in Finding Nemo it was water, in Ratatouille it was supposedly food.  If this film had a technical challenge, my money is on dirt — there was a lot of it and it looked as great as dirt can.

My only criticism of the movie involves the use of live-action footage: some of the 1969 movie version of Hello, Dolly! and some of actor Fred Willard as a company CEO.  Both seemed very out of place in a production by a company that has animated numerous human and dancing characters in the past.  My initial reaction after leaving the theater was that it smacked of simple laziness on the part of Pixar, but now I’m of the mind that it was just a very poor decision by director Andrew Stanton (who previously directed Finding Nemo).

I’ve heard that there has been squawking in various circles about a heavy-handed message in the movie, and to be honest when I saw the first trailer eons ago that was my first impression.  But WALL·E is nowhere near the club-you-over-the-head territory that Happy Feet was, thank God.  The movie may flirt with the boundary between story and propoganda, but it doesn’t cross it.  I’m sure some folks will be put off by the notion that the future is populated by fat, materialistic humans…but I wasn’t.  I think there’s some truth there, but the manner in which it is presented is unlikely to cause Junior to renounce worldly goods and embark on a lifetime of communal living.

I strongly recommend going to see the movie if you’ve enjoyed Pixar’s previous films.  Now if we could only get them to can the forthcoming Cars 2 in favor of an Incredibles sequel.