A good animated movie needs a very good story, and this has one.

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 2009)

Saw it on DVD, great sound and great picture.
From PIXAR, the same group that gave us one of my favorites, "Monsters, Inc". Although the two movies are quite different, one might even say totally different, I will compare them. Each has a very compelling story to tell, and the superb animation and voice acting are present to support the story. Many of the animated movies in recent years have looked superb, but suffered from very marginal stories.
In "UP" we see what can best be described as a love story. Two kids meet quite randomly, and long before they know what "love" is really all about, but they turn out perfect for each other. They get married, make plans for the adventures they want in live, grow old together, and find that somehow "real life" has gotten in the way of their dreams.
All this we see in the first few minutes of the movie. It sets up the fantasy, that an old man just living out his life can attach enough helium-filled balloons through the chimney of his little house to not only float up into the air, but also float to South America to a spot that he has dreamed about since he was a small boy. Our logic says this can't really happen, just as our logic tells us children don't really have power-generating Monsters in their closets at night. But this movie is not about logic, it is a fantasy.
This is an interesting, exciting movie with superb animation. But the real pay-off is in the love story, which isn't totally wrapped up until the very final image we see.
SPOILERS: As the young couple were growing up, they had an image, a hand-drawn picture which they placed on a photograph of the cliffs and waterfall in South America. The hand-drawn image was of their little house they dreamed of building on that site some day. That day never came. But through his perseverance and as the helium in the balloons finally lost their ability to keep the little house off the ground, it settled down to that very spot they had imagined all those years. He had finally given his wife, now deceased, the little house on the cliff.