by Emily Elizabeth Ellis

Created on: July 04, 2008   Last Updated: September 22, 2008

WARNING: SPOILERS!

Is it weird that the most moving and honest love story I've seen in a really long time, is a romance between a trash-compactor with eyes and a flying iPod?

In this romance-obsessed, sex-craving, instant-gratification culture of entertainment, I truly cannot remember the last time I saw a romance in a movie that I really believed in. Some movies come very close; some can make me smile and go "aww, how sweet." But reflecting on it afterward, it's very difficult for me to really believe that the feelings two characters in a movie have for each other is real love. I won't say it's only because there is too much sex (although that is probably a great factor in it); but there's also something superficial, something selfish - something like, "I am destined to be with this person, and now that I've found them they will fulfill my every need!" Bleh... Really?

I've seen Pixar's new movie "Wall-E" twice already since it came out (and I will probably go see it again). Some argue that Wall-E is a political statement - like an "Inconvenient Truth," but cuter - and some are too distracted by noticing that the robot protagonist Wall-E has similar features to Johnny 5 of "Short Circuit." But the story of Wall-E is something completely different than that: it is a love story. And not just any love story, but a love story between two robots who not only are NOT supposed to have feelings, they also have no real faces - just very expressive eyes - and no real dialogue - just very expressive beeps and blips. Yet somehow, I believed it. I really believed it. Hence, the reason I am planning to go see the movie a third time (I rarely go to see movies twice, much less three times). How can this be possible?

In the movie, Wall-E is a Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class, left on earth to clean up the giant mess that humankind has left behind through unchecked consumerism (and THAT is a whole other article I could write about right there). After 700 years, he is the only robot left, and his only companion is a pet cockroach. Wall-E, despite being a robot, has a beautiful sense of wonder and an appreciation for very simple things - something that everyone else in the movie has lost. When the hi-tech robot EVE, an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator with a habit of blowing up anything that moves, lands on earth, Wall-E is instantly smitten. Throughout the story, Wall-E's love for EVE drives him to follow her into space, and he almost accidentally ends up saving the

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