Give me a break

Rating: 4/10 (8 March 2010)

Carl (Asner) and Ellie meet, get married, can't have kids, she gets ill and dies. Carl blows up balloons to lift the house to Paradise Falls in South America, a place he and Ellie always wanted to go.
This is a tear jerker, and really not for kids. The first 25 minutes will tear your heart out. This is a love story and you are reminded of that every step of the way all the way to the very end. Yes, Ellie dies, but the love lives on. Now, this is okay, but keep a box of Kleenex around. Maybe two. You like to see kids cry? What about seeing adults cry? Hmmmm.. The promos have you believing this is a wonderful kids story. It's not. This is quasi adult story told via a cartoon. Cartoons appeal to kids. I rest my case.
Okay, to be fair, maybe most kids won't notice the love story, the illness, the dying and that's fine, but this is not the Disney I came to know through the years. Not at all.
The story continues and things happen and you forget about Ellie for about 2-minutes; then Carl, who always has Ellie on his mind, remembers something about her and there you are again reaching for the Kleenix. I must say it is astounding how fast we latch onto the deep love emotion and at every reminder of Ellie we are reaching for those pop-ups. We just don't like to see good people sad, even if they are cartoon characters.
Later on in the story we meet Charles Muntz (Plummer) an Explorer type who is on the search for a bird no one believes exists. And, we have talking dogs. When Muntz mentions out loud that meeting Mr. Fredrickson (Carl) is a real treat the dogs go wild. This was a funny scene with Muntz saying he has to be careful about using that word. I'd say it was the funniest scene in the movie. The dogs do provide some humor at times.
The voice of the dog, Alpha, was also supposed to provide some humor, but at times Alpha sounded like one of the Chipmunks and at other times, when Muntz adjusts the electronics in the collar, he sounded like.well, I really don't know. With either voice he was very difficult to understand. So much for humor there.
Oh, when Carl lifts the house UP into the air Russell (Nagai), a Cub Scout, looking to win a merit badge for helping elderly people, comes along too. I suppose he was supposed to be comic relief, (Carl is depicted as a grumpy old man), but the dogs win this hands down. Russell is used to move the story to places Carl doesn't want to go at times. Russell hopes his father, who he rarely sees, will finally make one of the Scout presentations. The father never shows. Where's that box? See?
Why would I watch an animated cartoon again? Wall-e was a disaster, so why? I had to see what others saw in here that prompted it to be nominated for Best Picture. I now know these people are useless and crazy, and I will never watch another animated cartoon movie even if, by law, it is the one movie I must watch before I die. I'll go along with Animated Feature category, but not Best Picture. Best Picture? No, let's leave Best Picture to the humans, not animations. Give me a break.
Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: No.