The little droid has an old VHS copy of the 1968 movie, and he watches it incessantly. Like the album, WALL*E the movie opens with Michael Crawford's "Put On Your Sunday Clothes." (Why Hello Dolly? Because WALL*E's composer, Thomas Newman, is the nephew of Lionel Newman, who conducted for Hello Dolly.) The tune plays cheerily over a view of the Earth from space, but as we zoom in to ground level we see that the planet is nothing more than a wasteland of trash and dust storms, with WALL*E toiling in the midst of all this, valiantly discharging his "directive" of cleaning up the planet, with only a cockroach for a companion. (It's a cute cockroach, too—only Pixar could get away with this.)

Most of the score partakes of the essential sweetness of WALL*E's character, and the whimsical nature of the story. All but wordless, the robot's nevertheless a delightful creation, looking and acting a bit like the Short Circuit character Number 5.

After the flown-in opening cut, Cue 2, "2815 A.D.," is more indicative of the general tone of the opening scenes of the film, with a rather serious setting of sad strings and meditative harp arpeggios as WALL*E goes about his thankless cleanup of the wrecked world. But this is Disney, and even though the tone of the film is rather darker than one might expect, especially in its last act, Stanford keeps things light and funny for the most part. Newman's score assists him all the way.

Another gold star for Thomas Newman

Thomas Newman previously collaborated with WALL*E's director Andrew Stanton on Finding Nemo, another excellent Pixar offering. WALL*E's score almost entirely eschews the use of electronics other than as sound effects, which might be a bit surprising, as most of the characters are robots. Instead, Newman relies on strings, horns and some well-deployed flute passages, especially in the jazzier numbers. The charm factor is up there.

Some of the (many) cues on this CD are quite short, such as "BNL," a (deliberately) aggravating advertising jingle referring to Buy and Large, the global corporation that has taken over the world and is responsible for its ruination. "First Date" is also a shortie, about a minute and 10 seconds, a little piece of lounge music with scat vocals popped with bongo drums.

The Peter Gabriel tune "Down to Earth" is getting a fair bit of attention, but the real gem here, apart from Newman's score and "It Only Takes A Moment," another Michael Crawford cut from Hello Dolly, is an outstanding old Louis Armstrong cut, "La Vie En Rose," which underscores WALL*E's attraction for EVE. You just can't go wrong with Pops.

Newman has done stellar work for films such as American Beauty, The Shawshank Redemption, The Lost Boys and Less Than Zero. WALL*E adds another gold star to his catalog. And it won't hurt Peter Gabriel, either.