Misleading advertising. Not for children

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 2009)

This movie is billed as "the funniest movie of the summer", with a PG rating for "some peril and action". It should be billed as "the scariest movie of the summer for kids", with a PG rating for "a heck of a lot of peril and a thoroughly frightening and upsetting storyline and message". It's the sort of animated movie I'd expect from Tim Burton, not Walt Disney and Pixar.
Here's what the promos show you:
* bright cheerful balloons lifting a house out of the gray yucky city
* a funny, crotchety old man
* a cute kid along for the ride
* a cute talking dog
* a cute goofy bird
* a standard comical cartoon villain
Here's what's actually in this movie:
* an absolutely charming couple having their dreams shattered. Not to mention the wife being stricken ill and dying just as they have a shot at unshattering the dream (my 7-year-old son was in tears at this point, 15 minutes into the movie)
* an elderly man sent to a retirement home against his will after being deemed a threat to the community because he conked someone on the head with his cane after they broke the mailbox he built with his beloved (now-deceased) wife
* a kid whose stepmother tells him he is an annoyance to his father
* a pack of snarling growling dogs realistically-rendered with glowing red eyes/collars chasing an unknown creature through a misty jungle (somewhat common in older Disney movies, but the scenes last much longer and are more intense than in the older movies)
* a mean, nasty, paranoid, completely uncomical villain
* the same dogs chasing people through a 3-D immersive landscape of cliffs and falling rocks
* the cute lovable dog hero (who, btw, is cartoony) cowering in absolute terror before the pack of dogs (who are, as I said above, realistically rendered)
* the elderly man's house being burned
* the kid being abandoned by the elderly man
* the kid tied to a chair on the open loading ramp of an airborne dirigible, slowly sliding down it toward his death (yes, there is a last-minute save)
* the cute funny mother bird hero being forced away from her babies by the pack of dogs
* and, finally, instead of the happy ending that we've come to expect from Disney/Pixar, when our heroes have saved the day and returned to normal life, there's the ultimate disappointment of all. The kid, you see, has been doing all of this to get his "Assisting the Elderly" badge and become a Senior Wilderness explorer so that his Dad will come to the ceremony. Kid gets badge, kid gets ceremony, and Dad doesn't show up. Yes, that's right the final message of the movie is "your Dad hates you"
Watching the promos, would you expect any of this? Do "funniest movie of the summer" and "some peril and action" even hint at any of this? Do any of the reviews mention any of the stuff I just listed? No, they warn you that "one character hits another one and draws some blood" (a tiny little spot of blood on the mailbox-breaker's head), and "a girl admits to tearing a page out of a library book" (ooo, the rebel!) and "a bird gets bitten in the leg" (yup, a big garishly-colored, completely non-realistic-looking bird). You read that, and you see the Disney/Pixar logo, and you think "OK, I don't mind that, and my kids can deal it."
Instead, I had one child clinging to my wife for most of the movie, and another crying and begging to leave halfway through. We stayed because we felt they needed to see the standard Disney/Pixar happy ending. See my last bullet point above to see what we got instead.
Yes, there were funny moments. The talking collars that show exactly what the dogs are thinking are hilarious and extremely well done, and there was a subtle homage to the classic "Dogs Playing Poker" paintings that had me in stitches.
But unlike other Disney and Pixar stuff, the scary and sad scenes were more frequent and much more compelling and overwhelming than the funny bits.
I don't usually go on the warpath like this - I figure, if you like a movie, see it, and if you don't, don't. But I am so incensed at how wildly Disney, Pixar, and the media have completely and utterly misrepresented this movie as a light, airy jaunt in a floating house instead of a terror-filled action/adventure movie that happens to be animated that I just have to speak out.