The word “wondrous” was invented for movies like WALL·E, which is more than perfectly fitting for a movie all about wonder and curiosity. Many great Pixar movies, from Toy Story to Ratatouille, have presented the trait of inquisitiveness as a virtue (though often resulting in a perilous but valuable journey) and in this film, it now becomes the central subject. Exploring that subject through the eyes of a robot, the Pixar animators now stake their mark of animated visual splendor in the science fiction genre.

Telling a good story is something the Pixar folks have never lost sight of and it is all the more astonishing here that it is done with so little dialogue. The first third of this movie is just a masterpiece of pure visual character-driven storytelling as we meet WALL·E (a Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-class) who is apparently left all alone on earth compacting and piling trash. He also has that little quality called curiosity as he has collected various items from the garbage from Christmas lights to a video tape of his favorite musical, Hello Dolly) in his little home that is an abandoned storage. At night, he “sleeps” by taking off his wheels and lowering his head into his cubical body.

WALL·E’s only companion on earth so far has been a small cockroach, but his rather lonely routine changes when he follows a red light that leads him to the site of a docking spaceship. He barely avoids getting crushed via digging his way into the ground. Out of the spaceship comes another robot, EVE (an Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) who is looking around for any signs of plant life. WALL·E is instantly smitten with her, though she unfortunately has the tendency to shoot first before asking questions. After EVE bonds with WALL·E’s pet cockroach, he is finally able to introduce himself and show Hello Dolly to her (from which he desperately gets a longing to hold hands just like Michael Crawford holds Marianne McAndrew's).

After he put fish characters into a touching father-son adventure, it does not come as a huge surprise that writer/director Andrew Stanton effortlessly brings such tangible human emotions to these animated robotic beings so that the story description can even be written. WALL·E’s eyes alone seem to carry all the emotions the character expresses from joy and awe to loneliness and tears. When EVE then enters the picture and he eventually turns her narrowing digital eyes to rounder, loving eyes, forget all the other recent, inane live-action romantic comedies you have seen.

This film, with Thomas Newman's subtly mesmerizing musical score and just a series of electronic purrs and one word dialogue exchanges between WALL·E and EVE (voiced by Ben Burtt and Elissa Knight, respectively), becomes one of the most delightful romantic comedies I have seen in at least the last five years. I will certainly have to watch the movie again (and I will, maybe even with the sound off) to closely see all the crisp visual details that convince that WALL·E is a he and EVE is a beautiful-looking robot.