Pixar living off of their previous successes

Rating: 5/10 (7 March 2010)

The first 15 minutes of the film are beautiful and perfect. The heart and soul of those minutes are completely in line with the excellence that Pixar has been able to produce through their many films. I would recommend anyone seeing those minutes as they are so appropo for any human film-goer to understand and enjoy.
Then there's the rest of the film. So lackluster. The characters are feeble. The story is nice and well-told, but relatively boring. If I had never seen other Pixar films, perhaps I would think this film would be an achievement, as opposed to something derivative and unimaginative. When reviewing that portion of the film, it's somewhat hard to remember individual instances that take place. This aspect is completely unlike other Pixar films, or for that matter, other animated films in recent years. The story is just not interesting. The characters are not interesting. The dialogue, the same. What in the story is compelling? Not much. There's no real story envelope of excitement. It's flat and somewhat dull, which for me, as a Pixar fan, is a great disappointment.
Watch the film, but treat it fairly.