Sweet sentimentality and raucous kiddie comedy...not always a sublime mixture, but the intentions are true

Rating: 7/10 (22 August 2010)

The opening eleven minutes of Disney/Pixar's animated "Up" are pure poetry in motion. Chronicling a man's journey in life from boyhood to married adult to lonely widower, director Pete Docter gives us images which are extraordinarily heartfelt, so elegiac in tone they should take an audience's collective breath away. Big dreamers but relative homebodies, an elderly man and his wife live happily together alone in their house until her passing. Faced with eviction, the man gets an amazing idea overnight: attach thousands of helium-filled balloons to his rickety old house and sail it through the air to a revered point in South America. But, as with 2008's "WALL·E", there has to be dramatic conflict, a villain, a chase, and lots of outrageous comedy in order to attract the youthful target audience. In a perfect world, there would be a Pixar effort designed to steadfastly avoid this kind of commercial pandering to 10-year-olds. Once the house reaches the next continent, the man, now joined by a chatty juvenile, encounters a rare bird being hunted by a world-renown explorer--the 78-year-old's childhood hero--who fails to live up to his newsreel notoriety. The bird only wants to get back to her babies in their nest (how's that for conflict?), while the man and his kid-companion are held off by a pack of dogs who have voice-boxes in their collars. If this isn't bad enough, at one point the dogs even prove to be flying aces in fighter planes apparently held in storage since WWI (it's a lackluster homage to "King Kong", and a highly unnecessary one). The screenplay, written by Pete Docter and his assistant Bob Peterson from a treatment by Docter, Peterson and Thomas McCarthy, is so wonderfully cognizant of an elderly person's traits and attachments to their beloved belongings, to then witness the central character being chased by talking dogs is an insult. And yet, because the filmmakers are wise enough to keep returning to the tale's likable principles, "Up" is often vastly entertaining. The detail is marvelous, often beautiful, as is the subtle music score by Michael Giacchino. There are a handful of near-terrible moments in the film which keep it from being a true masterpiece, but Docter and his team are surprisingly honest when it comes to the sentiment. The friendships made and lost in "Up" are genuinely touching; and, though the slapstick is noisy and sometimes mean-spirited, the overall intent to somehow steer this vessel to a happily-ever-after ending is clearly evident and commendable. *** from ****