Up, Up in the Air with My Beautiful Balloon

Rating: 8/10 (10 December 2009)

As they did in "Wall-E," the Pixar team creates an opening twenty minutes or so of movie in "Up" that in itself is a small masterpiece of streamlined narrative film-making, and if it doesn't leave you reduced to a puddle of dribbly tears by the time it's over, you have a heart of stone. However, also as in "Wall-E" but even more so here, the first part of the movie is so skillfully crafted that it leaves the rest of it somewhat lacking.
I feel like the Pixar filmmakers are trying too hard to satisfy two different audiences with the same movie. "Up" is about very adult issues -- dealing with the loss of a life partner, the obsolescence of old age -- crammed around a not-all-that-interesting adventure comedy story designed to delight the kiddies. "Wall-E" suffered from the same syndrome slightly; but the theme of environmental awareness in that film was universal enough, and integrated wholly enough into the action sequences, that the schizophrenia of it all was easy to overlook. In "Up," I would have preferred to just continue the story that's set up in the opening moments without the kid movie tangent, and that's what ultimately made "Up" a much less memorable viewing experience for me than other recent Pixar films.
I wonder how long it will be before Pixar forms a unit that makes animated films strictly for adults, as they seem to want to.
Grade: A-