Beautiful but random; NOT a film for young children

Rating: 6/10 (15 July 2009)

I love Pixar, and I love Ed Asner, and I went to this film thinking it would be beautiful and hilarious. It was beautiful, but it wasn't particularly hilarious, or full of any genuine emotion. I'm glad it made everyone involved a fortune, and now that the filmmakers are (good for them) carting their loot to the bank, I want to rant about how overrated this movie is.
The animation and all other technical aspects of the film are, of course, gorgeous. The voice acting is great. The land-based settings have no personality but are fine in a fairy tale way, I guess.
The old man's house is a fine old house, and the airship is a great airship.
The old man and the boy are, in my opinion, clichéd, stereotyped characters without much oomph to them. I can't even remember the chief bad guy well enough to say what I think about him, but the bad guy dogs were good and funny. Maybe not all that original, but original enough, and funny.
Ellie started off as a good character in the beginning, but then turned into a nonentity. The screenwriters seem to have an idiotic idea that anyone who has a regular day job -- who does something other than writing a screenplay or flying off in a house balloon -- is a boring stiff. If Ellie is such a firecracker, and she and her husband are too broke to travel to distant lands, why don't they go to amusement parks in their town? Or museums, or libraries, or camping trips? Or quickie cruises the Bahamas? If these people are too clueless to figure out how to have adventures within 100 miles from home, why would you think they could figure out how to have adventures anywhere else in the world? The movie focuses on what a great, spunky girl Ellie is -- but then, she's the only openly female character in the whole movie. The movie is sort of about how girls and other kids can dream, but it cuts every woman except for the woman who plays Ellie out of the casting process. Filmmakers: If you want some women out there to be able to afford to fly to South America to have adventures, WHY DON'T YOU TRY HIRING THEM?!?!??!?!!?!?!? Also: the overall lack of dialog may have seemed charming to the filmmakers and many viewers, but I see that some people have posted comments in the message board here indicating that they had missed important developments in the movie because the movie was just plain too subtle. Other users then skewer the users who admit to having misunderstood parts of the movie, but why is it the viewers' job to be Sherlock Holmes Movie Viewers, especially at an animated film that's partly aimed at small children? Why can't the filmmakers' get off their high purity horse and put in enough dialog to make sure that blind people in the audience, or people who just aren't great at figuring out visual clues, know what's going on? I guess, then, you could make a case that the whole house balloon trip is either a "real life event in the movie," or a "dream sequence within the movie." Either way: the trudging around part seems really absurd and gets old quickly.
The part with the dogs (I'm trying not spoil this too much) is actually exciting and funny, but it's simply too scary for small children who have problems with scary movies. The ad campaign for this movie went to great lengths to imply that Up was a funny, heartwarming movie for children. So why let the scary parts get scary enough that children are hiding behind the seats in the theater? The overall "scrapbook" theme is sweet and beautiful, and, for me, aside from the dogs, that was the one part that made the movie that made it sort of worthwhile. But it's also kind of a manipulative, sentimental, tear-jerking, greeting card kind of effort to yank the emotional chains of the audience members. Finding Nemo and Toy Story are two examples of comparable movies that evoked some of the same emotions a lot more subtly.
The filmmakers seem to be saying: We won't give you enough dialog to help you figure out what is going on with the plot -- but we will use mood music and stills to tell you over and over and over again (and again and again and again) that it's sort of bittersweet when children grow up to be old and then die with some of their dreams unfulfilled.