A few years ago, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's artificial intelligence lab, I met an android. Her conversation was perfunctory, mostly simple responses to my equally simple words, but her eyes, widening, narrowing and subtly changing angle, made a genuine emotional connection. That robot had me at "Hello". So it is with WALL-E (pictured), the eponymous hero of Disney-Pixars new animated film. Part Mars rover, part Andy Hardy, WALL-E charms us every step of the way as he saves a planet while pursuing chaste robotic love. The movie opens on a bleak future, reminiscent of films by director Ridley Scott at his dystopian best. Earth, abused and then abandoned by a population that never heeded Al Gore, lies grey and silent beneath the refuse of civilization.
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