Up, up. Then sideways a bit, then down with a bump.

Rating: 5/10 (12 September 2009)

I'm giving it a five because I thought the film was visually stunning and that Pixar were brave to make it so bittersweet. However the film for me failed on every level. If it was for kids then my seven year old was asking how long to go after ten minutes (If it is any good we generally get to thirty). My four year old was in tears when we had to explain that the brilliant goofy exploreress had grown old and died. She then proceeded to ask questions about her all through the film. If there was supposed to be something for adults then the ones in my party left the cinema feeling depressed and not just because they had wasted two hours of their lives and their hard earned cash.
It is alright to willingly suspend your disbelief if a context is created whereby you happily do so, however this film doesn't create that context. We watch a decrepit, frustrated old man on the point of being taken to the old people's home spend the next hour or so dragging a floating house around the Andes. I won't go into the stupid bird, the immortal zeppelin adventurer who turns out to be an electronics whizz/dog breeder/dog trainer and the pointless and contrived action sequences because I'll just end up punching a mirror. I thought the golden rule in cinema was Less is More.
Unfortunately Up is more or less.
Reading the other comments on these boards I become profoundly suspicious, because it seems to me there are innumerable highly intelligent individuals making acute and incisive observations as to how extraordinarily brilliant a lot of extraordinarily mediocre films are. Their observations are generally so profound that i am left agape how anybody of such obvious intelligence would award any film ten out ten, least of all dross like this. Seems like a place where people come to hype.
Regards