CRITIC’SPICK

A lot of people have seen this latest computer-animated film from Pixar, but a lot of people haven’t. It’s likely many of them feel, as someone expressed it to me last week, that this was basically a film for kids, something that thinking adults didn’t need to deal with. Nothing could be further from the truth. Daring and traditional, groundbreaking and familiar, apocalyptic and sentimental, this often wordless story of robots-in-love gains strength from embodying contradictions that would destroy other films. “Wall-E” is the latest example of what’s become second nature for Pixar, but next door to impossible for anyone else: the ability to appeal to the broadest possible audience without insulting anyone’s intelligence.