From the spectacular creative team at Pixar, that enclave of inventiveness in Emeryville that turns out memorable animation pictures from "Monster's, Inc." to "Finding Nemo," "Toy Story to "Ratatouille," "Wall-E" has too many moments that'll drive you up, well, the wall.

At an AMC San Diego preview, the crowd, heavy with kids, cheered in appreciation of a movie that creates a relationship between two robots that incessantly squeal "WallEEEEEEEEEEE" and "Evvvvvvvvvvvvvve." OK, it's a love story, a mechanical one, so to speak, but those sounds are irritating.

Wall-E, which stands for Water Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class, is the lone survivor (except for his cockroach pal) of an Earth that has been overrun by trash and pollution. It's 2077, and the remaining humans have been evacuated to a first-class spaceship where they're all obese, nestled in lounge chairs and having robots do everything for them. Can't they brush their own teeth?

Back on Earth, the little guy with the "E.T."-like eyes, does the custodial job he'd been programmed for - gather up mounds of material and compact it in his belly. At night, he retreats to a kind of secluded cell where he stores a collection of tchotchkes from a cigarette lighter to a Rubik's Cube.

His only companion is that roach and it's to director-screenwriter Andrew Stanton's credit that the one bug that'll survive a nuclear war, the most reviled of insects, is sympathetic. He, too, needs a friend.

Meanwhile, unexpectedly arriving on Earth is a different kind of robot, one that looks like it came from the Apple Store (former Pixar chairman Steve Jobs is CEO of Apple). It's named EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), and she's been sent by the folks on the spaceship to see what's happening on their home planet.
Wall-E, who takes his romantic cues from the movie version of "Hello, Dolly!" (the lone tape he can play on an old machine) is smitten. He aches to imitate the young lovers in the film who hold hands. To say this is a stretch, well, where's a Beatles tune when you need it, or a Metallica one?

Wall-E is cute and clumsy, lonely and decrepit, waddling through a post-apocalyptic world of abandoned Buy N' Large stores. A newspaper's front page sails by with this headline, "Too much trash!"

On board the spaceship called Axiom, the captain sees the light when Eve brings back a living plant. He wants to return his passengers home to Earth. Voiced vapidly by Jeff Garlin, a stand-up comic and Larry David's best friend on HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm," it's a wooden performance.

One can't fault Pixar for taking a risk. But "Wall-E" smacks of creative people in a room playing with toys (and a $180 million budget, according to reports), trying too hard, thinking too much. You admire the work, the edgy animation, the chutzpah, but there's only so much heart you can get into a mechanical contraption.
The film is preceded by "Presto," a hilarious short cartoon about a magician who neglects to feed his rabbit and how the bunny gets revenge. It's magical.

"Wall-E." Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes. Rated: G. 2 1/2 stars.
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