UP with the Movie, Down with the Dogs

Rating: 8/10 (5 January 2010)

As we have learned from their previous nine films, Pixar makes amazingly awesome movies (with possibly the exception of Cars, but even then not really). For their tenth endeavour they have produced UP, a family film that lives up to the company name. My opinion during the first half an hour of the movie in fact, was that UP would be the best Pixar film yet, and it almost was.
I'm not going to spend time on the good parts of the movie, because they're the usual good pixar things. Instead I'm just going to have to talk about the damn dogs.
Starting around a half hour in the audience is introduced to a group of dogs, whose collars transmit what their thinking into words. To me this sounds like a bad idea on paper and it looks worse on screen, especially since Pixar can't make up it's mind to whether the dogs are geniuseswho can fly airplanes or the typical mutts that gets distracted by a squirrell. I mean it's weird enough as it is, having an old explorer living in a tropical forst own hundred of dogs let alone ones that can talk. In one scene the heroes of the movie escape imprisonment by throwing a tennis ball by their guards. In another the dogs make fun of their leader because he has to wear the cone of shame (one of those anti-itch dog cones). Keeping in mind these are dogs who in previous scenes have used GPS systems and cooked gourment meals. This might be okay in another cartoon movie but come on Pixar I expected more from you than a scene wear dogs are playing poker in the background.
In the end though this is another great Pixar movie that is miles ahead of any other kid movie. I just wished there weren't the stupid dogs.