For seven hundred years a robot named WALL-E (Waste Allocation Loader Lifter, Earth-Class) has been trying to pick up centuries worth of rubbish left by the human inhabitants of earth. But in that time he’s developed a personality and is easily distracted by shiny objects, spends time caring for his pet cockroach, gazes wistfully at the stars and longs for companionship. Then a spaceship lands near his home and from it comes EVE, who appears to be the answer to his prayers. EVE discovers that WALL-E has stumbled on the secret to the planet’s survival and rushes back to space to tell the humans. But he can’t let her go and so follows her on the biggest adventure of his life…

Director Andrew Stanton is a veteran of Pixar features and his expertise shows in two key aspects; the way he gives his mechanical characters distinct personalities and his astute comic timing. He makes the robots’ feelings real to us, creating a bond between the audience and characters. Their romance is quite touching. And he nails the comedy, showing WALL-E’s delight in an object-finding montage (such as a bra he wears like a pair of glasses), the wave of destruction he causes on the spaceship or his tentative courtship of EVE when she is entirely unaware of his presence, sheltering her from the rain and playing a one-sided game of ‘Pong’. It’s the right mix of slapstick and situation comedy. Of course there are film references for the grown-ups including “Star Trek”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Poseidon Adventure”. The director hits the jokes and moves on, knowing another will be along shortly. But Stanton keeps the pacing tight, bringing the film in at a sprightly ninety-eight minutes.

The characters are marvellously rendered. WALL-E looks like Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit” designed by the engineers at JCB. His body is a small cubic trash compactor and when he’s scared or recharging his batteries his head and limbs retract into it, leaving him looking like a slightly rusty yellow washing machine. His hydraulic arms have a full range of movement and his digits are remarkably nimble. His eyes move independently of each other with large lenses that give us the impression of expressive peepers. Lots of tiny ‘facial’ movements and hand gestures give him a huge range of expression. As do his nervous movements. Look at his reaction when he thinks he’s run over his pet cockroach, or the way he shakes and hides when the rocket lands. He trundles along on his caterpillar tracks (occasionally looking pigeon-toed) with a jittery motion as if adjusting to every imperfection in the ground below him. He has a good sense of weight and the animators have nailed the sense of weightlessness in space. But most importantly he has a personality. He exudes a sense of childlike wonder at the world around him thanks to the humanised reactions and makes a great slapstick stooge.

The screenplay by director Stanton, long-time collaborator Pete Docter and Jim Reardon is mainly a love story between WALL-E and EVE, which seems an odd concept considering they are robots. But the writers put so much into their relationship that it works. There’s the awkward first meeting where EVE nearly vaporises WALL-E with a laser, his tentative introduction and subsequent sharing of his container full of treasures and love of “Hello Dolly”, her discovery of the key to human survival, his romance of her while she’s offline for several months and his pursuit beyond the boundaries of the earth. And all the way through we feel the warmth between them grow. There are schmaltzy moments, but these are balanced by comedy, so you never feel like you’re going to go into a diabetic coma from all the syrup. And there is a strong environmental message that warns us to clean up our act while we have the chance.

The majority of the voices were produced electronically by Ben Burtt, who proves how much expression can be put into WALL-E’s pronunciation of his name and EVE’s. He also does a nice line in tuneful, absent-minded humming and surprised noises. Meanwhile Elissa Knight provides the vocodered sound of EVE, showing how many possible intonations there are of the hero’s name. Fred Willard turns up as one of the only live-action characters (if you include the excerpts from “Hello Dolly”) as Shelby Forthright, CEO of the corporation whose rubbish crams the earth. It’s an energetic performance that seems to draw on his talent for improvisation if his spontaneity is anything to go by. Sigourney Weaver features as the voice of the ship’s computer, while John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy offer a human perspective on the world as John and Mary and Jeff Garlin is nervy as Captain McCrea.

“WALL-E” is a delight for all the family. There are enough cute robots, chases and adventures to keep the kids happy while parents will be spellbound by the exquisite animation and love story. The direction is great, the writing as good as anything I’ve seen from Pixar before and the voice performances remarkable considering most aren’t done by humans. I completely fell in love with it and would happily watch it again and again. But I still think it’s weird how much merchandising there is considering the environmental message of the film.