"WALL-E” is by far the best movie of the year so far. And not just the best animated movie, but the best movie. It has everything one could want: a sympathetic main character, a good story-line, some romance, and it’s not just fluff — it makes some serious comments on life. And as an added bonus, it is a movie both adults and children can enjoy.

The most amazing aspect of the movie is how deeply one comes to feel about WALL-E (the name stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) considering that he is not only an animated robot, but that he has no decipherable dialogue for most of the movie.

Ben Burtt is the mastermind behind WALL-E’s voice as well as the overall character voice designer and sound designer. This is the same man who created the sounds for R2-D2 in “Star Wars,” and his ability to convey meaning and emotion through beeps, chirrups and squeaks is remarkable.

Except for background music, a couple of video clips and some advertising (that amazingly has lasted 700 years), there is no understandable spoken language for at least the first 30 to 45 minutes of the film. But that doesn’t mean WALL-E isn’t communicating.

It becomes clear right away that WALL-E is no ordinary robot: In addition to being the last working robot around, he has developed a personality.

It seems that Earth was vacated many years earlier. As the level of trash and pollution became too much to deal with, humans boarded spaceships on which they were supposed to cruise for five years while robots back on earth cleaned up the mess. But the mess was so bad that when the movie opens, 700 years has gone by and there is still plenty of work to be done but only WALL-E is left to do it all.

Enter EVE. A robot probe sent to see if plant life has yet returned to Earth (thus her name: (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). Not knowing this is EVE’s directive, WALL-E becomes infatuated with the new robot. Through WALL-E’s interactions with EVE, she too develops a unique personality.

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When, after fulfilling her directive and finding a plant, EVE is taken back to a ship filled with humans, WALL-E follows and adventure ensues.

All of the robot characters are imbued with endearing, or sinister as the case may be, qualities that enable the audience to sympathize with them. Much more so than the humans.

The humans, we learn, have been so catered to that they can no longer function on their own. They can only consume. And they think only about themselves. A touch screen, that allows them to communicate with others and give commands to the robots, is in front of their faces, distracting them from all else.

At one point, WALL-E knocks the screen off of a woman’s hover chair, and she is amazed to discover that there is a swimming pool on board the ship. Another scene shows two men talking to each other through the screen even though they are sitting next to each other.

Clearly there is a statement being made about how disconnected we are becoming by all of the technology around us — a warning that we may one day end up as complacent, as ignorant of our surroundings, and as disconnected from others as these characters. These people can barely walk or stand up any more.

Another dig at modern-day society is that one major corporation was clearly in control of all aspects of life even before Earth was vacated — in fact, it appears that this corporation was even in control of the government, so instead of having a president, there was just the CEO.

Some of the fun aspects of the film, aside from top-notch computer animation, are the live-action sequences. Fred Willard plays the CEO of the BnL (Buy-n-Large) Corporation that owned everything when the spaceships first left Earth, and in the video clips of his messages to the people, he is live action. It’s an interesting technique to distinguish the past from the present; it makes the past somehow more real than the present (in the film).

Or perhaps it just highlights how much more vibrant the past was when people actually took action and created things themselves rather than merely being passive consumers.

Another live-action clip from the past is a video WALL-E finds of “Hello Dolly.” It is poignant on two levels: At one level, a robot has evolved to the point where he yearns for the kind of closeness shown in the scene he favors. At the second level, the live-action scene highlights the complete lack of human intimacy displayed by the people on board the spaceship.

Make of all that what you will, but it is rare to find a mainstream movie that is willing to address such issues, and that manages to do so in such a fun and entertaining way. Usually, if you’re going to see a movie that makes you question where our country is going, it will be a heavy movie that leaves you a little depressed when you leave the theater. But in this one, you get the social message and have a jolly good time to boot.

Amanda Brooks can be reached at 737-1057 or at abrooks@lompocrecord.com.