Wait. A post-apocalyptic Disney movie?

Now I've seen everything. And by everything I mean Wall-E. With all apologies to 'Wanted' which I actually considered seeing, especially after reading this review, the Pixar tale of robots in love and fat people destroying the earth got my first theater-going dollar this summer.

In case you've missed the marketing and media blitz, Wall-E is a little robot who lives on earth, slowly cleaning it up after people abandoned it hundreds of years prior. His best friend is a cockroach. There's no talking at all in the first part, except for the occasional bloop. Eventually, Wall-E meets another robot sent to earth looking for plant life and gets locked in some sort of preternatural courtship.

Don't want to get too bogged down in the plot -- Wall-E's romantic entanglements take us to the the giant spaceship Axiom, where humanity has resided for these nee 700 years, getting hugely fat and suffering some bone loss. Walking is a thing of the past, and everyone is inundated with screens advertising everything from "waffles in a cup" to, well, "cupcakes in a cup."

The filmmakers say that they were not trying to make a message movie, and only wanted to tell the tale of two robots in love. I'm calling bullshit on that. They are just saying the right things now that some fat consumers are upset. If there is no message here, why are there some scenes with excessive billboards as far as the eye can see -- reminiscent of "They Live" after Rowdy Roddy Piper puts on the sunglasses. Not too mention the whole Fred Willard as CEO/President of the world.

But maybe that's reading too much into it. It is a kid's movie after all. Which means there is sure to be all kinds of cheap plastic crap associated with it. And that raises all kinds of hypocritical questions when the message is environmental.

edit: 4 stars