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Pixar's latest bar raising, critical ga-ga inducing, box-office smashing effort arrived in UK cinemas a little later than the US, so the glowing reviews have been making their way across the pond for the past few weeks. In fact the praise has been such that people are talking about the possibilities of Wall*E getting a nod in the Best Picture category at next year's Oscars, and not just in the Best Animated Feature slot where it is sure to win. This proves 3 things. 1. Pixar are very good at what they do. 2. It is never too early to talk about next year's Oscars. And 3. there's not much point in having a Best Animated Feature category if, when something genuinely decent comes along, a success in said category is seen as secondary to a berth on the Best Picture roster. I could go on and on about the ludicrousness of having a category where you have an approximate 1 in 12 chance of winning just by making the film, but lets focus instead on the brilliance, or lack thereof of this supposed Best Picture contender.

All Pixar films are pretty great, with Cars the only possible exception, but some are greater than others. For many, one of the most fondly remembered Pixar films would be Finding Nemo, a movie that was written and directed by Wall*E helmer Andrew Stanton. Whilst Finding Nemo was delightful, it didn't really deviate too much from the standard trappings of an animated film, but Stanton has made a conscious effort to do just that here. For starters there's a pretty bleak, dystopian presentation of Earth, for seconds Stanton dispenses with the cloying, sentimental original songs one usually hears and instead replaces them with a brilliant Louis Armstrong cover of La Vie en Rose and songs from Hello Dolly. Most significantly however is the fact that for large chunks of running time the film features absolutely no dialogue. None. Zip. Nada. And despite this, or perhaps because of it, Wall*E - both the film and the robot - are as expressive as anything you'll see this year. It is a brilliant achievement in animation and sound design and the latter in particular is where Oscar voters should be turning their attention next year.

The story is a pretty good swipe at the way humans currently live their lives. Portrayed as useless, dependent slobs, they won't do anything for themselves, interact only with computer screens 3 inches from their face and will not acknowledge anything going on around them. They brought the Earth to a virtual standstill with their complete disregard for the planet and were forced some 700 years before the film is set to leave the planet and live in space. During those 700 years our hero, Wall*E, has been cleaning up their never-ending mess. He's basically a trash compactor, and spends his days building huge towers of cubic trash until one day a probe robot lands near him searching for plant life. The probe is called Eve, which Wall*E very cutely cannot pronounce. He falls in love, and, well you'll have to watch to see what happens next, although in truth nothing that happens comes out of left-field.

They always say however that it isn't about where you are going, but how you get there, and Pixar have got there in a fair amount of style. The animation is gorgeous. It always is of course, but it is worth repeating again. Some people have complained the film is a little preachy but I don't think it is. The message is obvious but the film is hardly sermonising. Whilst it may be overtly about cherishing the planet we live on, deep down this is simply a love story and it is a bloody good one. Stanton and co have managed to make a love story between two robots seem convincing and the journey they take together is both enchanting and humorous. You might even be ever so slightly choked at the end - and that is pretty good going for a cartoon about a trash colector and a probe.

Whilst I'm not sure it matches the brilliance of the Toy Story films or even last year's Ratatouille, this is still a very good film that I'm certain will appeal to children and adults alike. The response in the cinema I was in, mostly filled by adults, was very positive. Not for a second do I believe it should be nominated for Best Picture, and I've never ever been a fan of the existence of a Best Animated Feature category. However nominations for writing and sound design will be the least the film deserves and this will go down in Pixar's ever-burgeoning pantheon of very good movies.