Daniel Engber certainly did not take away the same impressions and/or messages I did. The messages that I took away are as follows:

1. Even little, lonely workaholics can find love. Wall-E is the last of his kind apart from his giant cousins aboard the Axiom. He's been working at his assigned mission for 700 years, and working at it alone for a good chunk of that. And what does he do when he's off-duty? He plays a videotape of Hello, Dolly that shows two people falling in love, watching it wistfully. There is more than a little bit of Charlie Chaplin's immortal Little Tramp in Wall-E.

2. Beautiful People (as represented by EVE) sometimes can look past the superficial to see the good heart beneath the rough, lower-class exterior. It took her awhile, but she did get there.

3. Sentients in love will do whatever it takes to save their beloved if it is possible at all. When EVE realized the Axiom did not contain the parts she needed to repair the badly damaged Wall-E, she fought her way past OTTO's security system to help the Captain regain cotnrol of his ship and get it back to Earth.

4. Humans can undo the damage that humanity has done to the planet. It will not be easy, but it can be done. The story did not end with Wall-E and EVE heading off into the sunset holding hands. It continued in the credits, right up to the last frame. It showed the Captain and the subsequent generations continuing what Wall-E and his fellow 'bots had begun, and turning the planet green again.

I did not take the appearance of the humans aboard the Axiom as a slap at the obese, or even as a slap at American consumer culture. The Axiom has been in space for 700 years. I do not know if the ship has an artificial gravity generator. It could, but more likely the ship was meant to operate in low to zero G. (The movie did not establish the precise conditions aboard the ship.) 700 years equals something on the order of 23 generations of people, 22 generations of which never knew Earth and its 1-g field. Extrapolating from what has been learned about extended time in low to zero gravity from Skylab, Mir and ISS missions, it is conceivable humans adapted to the conditions in their new environment. With robots to do all the work for them, humanity indulged in its inherent love of taking it easy.

Engber referred to the Axiom as a cruise ship.News flash! The only people who work on a cruise ship are the crew. And here, with the exception of the Captain the crew is 100% robotic. Everyone else is a passenger. The Captain is merely a human figurehead to reassure the passengers; OTTO the Autopilot actually runs things. And like HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey, OTTO knows something Captain doesn't - a secret that changes the mission objective. Plus which, OTTO does not want to give up his power....

While I don't think Wall-E is as good a movie as The Incredibles, Cars or Ratatouille, like those it has messages. And like those other Pixar films, Wall-E delivers its messages beautifully.

I think Daniel Engber needs to go to the opthamologist and have his eyes checked. I really don't think he saw the same movie I did.