Having won the PR war, there is now no means by which a viewer can allow himself to judge a Pixar product as wanting or in this case, horrid. A movie so underscripted (and over messaged) that if you wasted five words describing the plot you'd give everything away. Audiences still don't know when they're being narratively cheated, or when a slightly promising idea has gone off the rails, or become a bloated, maddening mess. I never ever imagined when I rented this that I would be swearing at the screen as the unbearable latter two thirds of this movie wore out their welcome.<br /><br />So here we are (AGAIN) with the unpromising clichés of a robot who wants to feel love, a ships computer issuing a self-destruct countdown, a crowd that requires one person to save them.<br /><br />Wall-e himself makes sad eyes over and over. The movie milks this in every scene - Put "robot" and "love" into the big Hollywood script writing machine and you always get something like this. The movie becomes bloated with surface activity whose conception calls for dragging out tired computer animation, and the familiar set of unnecessary/lookalike obstacles to be overcome. It devolves into the usual thought (and time) wasters. In the end, things have reached the same frantic, overproduced excess that execs have been pushing for 50 years. Wall-E is exactly as bloated as Hello Dolly was in 1969. (& I challenge you to sit through that forgotten dud.)<br /><br />In the 1968 movie Oliver, at an emotional bottom, the title moppet sings a song called "Where is love?" Lionel Bart was criticized for writing a song with sentiments too developed for a child to voice. While a child may seek the love a missing parent, they don't seek love in general as a disembodied ideal. Likewise for Wall-e. Here, barely three minutes after Wall-E is introduced, he's dreary little headcase pining for love, which is a limp idea dramatically for a kids film, and forces half the problems that ensue. The other half come from the wearying agenda, and this is coming from someone who is relieved we are finally in the green era.<br /><br />Vain, high-concept viewers have taken pride in their ignorance of a device here, which is old news; large stretches of silence are novel only to audiences who are unfamiliar with Jaques Tati, the 28 silent minutes that open 2001, enormous silent stretches of the ingenious Blow-Up (& countless other examples) and who can't fathom the silent era.<br /><br />The movie asks two tiny things of an audience; to nod in agreement with its simpleton moral pronouncements, and to pass the time distracted by a bunch of surface activity. Right in the middle, between those two things, is where any good movies soul resides, what the movie ask you to cogitate over; ideas! Sorry no ideas here, just an abundance of messages: Towers of garbage taller than the skyscrapers we built (check, message delivered) An indictment of bignesss and Wal-mart (check, message delivered) Headed by a craven CEO (check, message delivered) A single remaining plant (check, messaged delivered) A space-ark filled with helpless fatties (check, message delivered) etc. etc. etc. etc. (message delivered).<br /><br />A glimpse into the future has never been so hopelessly stuck in the narrative past, and never looked so much like Victorian corn. The movie just cannot rest until a parade of morals has been pounded home. There is little sense of wonder in it. It ain't surprising that it was directed by the guy who made Little Nemo.<br /><br />The movie becomes exactly as dreary, tiring and preachy as the premise of a largely wordless movie about ecology sounds. It does not overcome its major decisions. Regardless of it's popularity now, no one will be watching this in ten years because no one will be able to trudge through it. It is grotesquely unsubtle… hideously preachy.<br /><br />Wall-E is is as insufferable as a dinner guest who explains the correct moral stance on every topic that comes up. Message delivered.