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Don't wait for the DVD! Gather all the kids between the age of three and 93 and go see WALL-E in all of its glorious fun and color in a large-screen movie house! You'll love the frustrated robot, who spends hundred of years seeking satisfaction in his mundane job and love of a lady robot. It could be the best Disney (partnered with Pixar) film of all time, eclipsing even the superior quality and originality of the classic, "Fantasia". I'm an old Disney fan brought up in the 30s with "Snow White" and "Fantasia", so it hasn't been easy for me to adjust to the tremendous changes in animation of the past decade or so. Of course, many are very creative, and they've brought to animation a three-dimensional, video-game reality that the flat cartoons never could.

However, along with those "improvements" came too many human figures that resembled boneless balloon creatures with Botox-like faces and dead eyes, who all looked like they were moving under water. Gone were the wonderful, exaggerated antics of Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, Goofy, Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny, Jerry, Tweetie and Sylvester. And except for "Fantasia", there were few attempts to bring humans as major figures into those 30s, 40s and 50s cartoons. No matter what kind of cartoon art, flat or digitalized, we homo sapiens always come off as stiff, staring, bloated puppets.

That problem is intentionally emphasized in this year's megahit digitally animated, "WALL-E". The year is 2815 and we stupid, self-destructive humans have burned and polluted away the Earth and are long gone from the planet. And good riddance to us, Disney-Pixar wants us to know. Robots with charming emotions and fine senses of humor have taken over, but most eventually wore out and ran down, and WALL-E faces eternal loneliness on the desolated planet. Remnants of humanity still survive on a space station a light year or two away, and it is immediately evident that they're even more flaccid than their Earthbound ancestors, grossly overweight, addicted to meaningless TV and so lazy, they're no longer required to walk.

However, the one non-animated human with any energy, the evil boss played by a live-action Fred Willard (frequent Leno guest comic who always a cocktail glass) is always looking for a reason to return to the home planet. He sends out a shiny. sexy robot, appropriately named EVE. She goes to Earth as a probe to look for any signs of the planet's recovery in air quality and restart of plant growth.

Meanwhile, down on the devastated,

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