Theatre Footle: Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw @ The Old Vic

Peter Hall's production of Pygmalion transferred to The Old Vic this summer after a successful run in Bath. And while it's watchable enough to explain this staying power, it's also an uneven and slightly disappointing production.

The sharply observed comedy of manners and morality sees Henry Higgins - portrayed in a more sprightly and capering fashion than usual by an excellent Tim Pigott-Smith - make a bet with his friend, Captain Pickering, that he can pass a flower girl off as a duchess within six months.

Michelle Dockery takes centre stage as Eliza Doolittle. At first she is something of a feeble caricature of the Cockney flower girl, but she really comes into her own during Eliza's transformation. It's no surprise that, particularly to a female audience, Eliza becomes more likable as she begins to assert her independence and right to be acknowledged, but Dockery also displays a knack for comic timing that brings the longer, more inert scenes to life.

Being a play which rather depends on people sitting around drawing rooms, Hall's decision to inject a little lively movement and physical comedy into proceedings is a wise one. Unfortunately, it's taken to a rather irksome degree by some of the cast. This is particularly true of Una Stubbs's Mrs. Pearce, who takes the slyly observant, principled housekeeper and turns her into Barbara Windsor. Her oddly hypnotic skirt-swishing makes her look like she needs a hip replacement and the emphases in her speech seem unnatural.

Bernard Shaw slides sharp barbs into most of his characters - particularly the female ones - so making the most of one with a strong personality is vital. Higgins' mother (surely the inspiration for the mother-son relationship in North By Northwest?) displays most of the wisdom and foresight in the play. Barbara Jefford is never quite convincing, however, and hardly seems to own the stage even when front and centre.

Tony Haygarth's Alfred Doolittle is, on the other hand, surprisingly funny and effective. In theory his characterisation method, which involves speakingthewordsasfastaspossibleone- aftertheotherandoccasionallymumbling, ought to be alienating and irritating. In fact, it moves the pace along, delivers the one liners sharply and doesn't leave too much room for navel gazing. In a play with a two and a half hour runtime, that can only be a blessing.

I did laugh, I did feel at least faintly involved and I did like Tim Pigott-Smith's performance. He struck a very good balance between capering japery and depth of character. However, I still felt short-changed by the production as a whole. The fact that the set changes were lumbering and slow (although it was a stunning and well-observed set design) only served to reinforce this.

Not one to spend full price on. It's running until 9th August.

Film Footle: WALL-E

Pixar is, very likely, my favourite company in the whole world. From the heights of Toy Story to the not-quite brilliant but still exceedingly watchable Ratatouille, they have never produced a dud. Some have been three star wonders, others have zoomed straight to five. WALL-E is one of the latter.

I'm going to hold back from saying that it's as good as Toy Story because I do think WALL-E slightly suffers from a lack of truly coherent storyline. But in terms of characterisation, watchability, animation and heart without sentiment, it's up there with the very best.

At some point in our future, the Earth has become so clogged with pollution that people have taken to five-year cruises aboard luxury spaceships where their every whim is catered for. WALL-E clean up bots are deployed to clean up the mess in the meantime. Some 700 years later, Earth is still uninhabitable, and a single bot remains, accompanied by a near-indestructible cockroach and blithely going about his duty whilst constructing a personal archive of any interesting bits and bobs (lighters, Rubik's Cubes and old VCRs of Hello Dolly, for example) that he comes across.

WALL-E's world is shaken by the arrival of a probe bot named Eve, whose job it is to find evidence of continued life on Earth. A slightly daft but likeable storyline about rogue computers and spaceship captains ensues but at this point any plot could take over and you'd still enjoy the spectacle.

What really marks WALL-E out from other animated films of a similar type is the lack of dialogue. Between them, the two main characters are capable of voicing only five words, and with these, and gesture, they conduct their love story. Eve's expressions are limited to what her blue-lit eyes can show. WALL-E has a whole battery of screws and joints to employ, and the Pixar animators make the most of each and every one to show him in love, trembling in fear, questioning, being determined and going about his daily business. The range of movement given to this unquestionably adorable machine is really impressive given that he has none of the usual cute characteristics animators can exploit, such as Sulley's fluffy blue coat in Monsters, Inc.

For the first fifteen minutes or so of WALL-E, there is no dialogue at all. That sets the tone for a Chaplin-esque physical comedy, accompanied by some of the most deft and impressive animation of its kind (i.e. not hand drawn). Some in-jokes are dropped in for the wry laughs; for example, when WALL-E fully recharges the noise is that of an Apple computer waking up, and he watches films through an iPod. Personally, even though I have a Mac I love, I am more impressed with Steve Jobs for his founding of Pixar than any of his Apple legacy, and it provoked a wry snicker from me and a few other geeks in the audience. Much of the humour is soundly slapstick, of a very enjoyable type. The love story and the moral are both played out in a heartwarming way, lacking in cloying sentiment, which was thoroughly relieving.

Cute, funny, classily rendered and clever. You can't really ask for more than that, can you?