Pleasant but very artificial

Rating: 7/10 (14 June 2009)

Pixar seems to be hitting a bit of a wall lately. "Wall-E" may have wowed some adult critics, but I noticed that it did not hold the attention of actual children in an actual theater. Sadly the same is true for "Up" even though it has a more childlike storyline. Too many disparate elements -- a house powered by balloons, hordes of talking dogs, a big bird and a giant dirigible? OK, whatever. This is one of the weirdest movies I've seen lately but it's a shame the screenplay is a sort of rehash of aspects of previous Pixar movies. The tearjerking dialogue-free story of loss? We already saw that in TOY STORY 2. Long stretches of no dialogue or limited dialogue? WALL-E. I got the feeling that this movie was just "Let's do a movie about a house powered by balloons!" and they just threw a lot of other stuff at it. (And why did they spend 2/3 of the movie firmly on the ground in a boring, rocky landscape on a tedious plodding trek to a waterfall we can already see? A lot of this movie just isn't any FUN.)
Don't mean to sound too harsh - the characters are lovingly created and occasionally also lovable (although his character was annoying and trite, I loved the expressions on the little Asian boy).The action-packed ending is pretty exciting. And, make sure to stay for the credits to see what happens to the characters. It's by no means the worst Pixar film (that honor goes to CARS)... and I liked this one better than WALL-E...
...but at the same time, it's no TOY STORY, BUG'S LIFE or INCREDIBLES either. It's a given that nothing in UP is going to make any sense physically, but some things in the characters' lives don't make any sense either. Only in Hollywood fairy tales do modern American boys join Wilderness Scouts and go door to door down city streets (!) looking for old men to help, for example. What planet do these writers live on? Slowly over the years, Pixar's stories (while technically as impressive as ever) have been getting more and more contrived and less natural feeling; they also feel as if they're trying to score more points with adult film critics than with the children. (One of the previews at this showing was for PARTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, which looked like more of a blast for the kids, and a movie I wish they had made when I was a kid!)
But the whole superiority of Pixar WAS the combination of the stories plus the technical achievement. So, this trend remains worrisome. Pixar really needs to get back to basics with their next project.