A Flawed Film from the Pixar Assembly Line

Rating: 6/10 (1 March 2010)

When "Tin Toy" and other animated shorts first appeared from Pixar, it was like a breath of fresh air in the world of CGI. Instead of more robots, they boldly took on the challenge of rendering natural subjects, including human beings. The slightly drunken-looking wobbling of some characters (maybe, again, to avoid the precise, laws-of-physics appearance of most other computer animations of that time) was a bit distracting, but the images of flexible objects (like babies) were break-through accomplishments.
Now, almost thirty years later, the technology has advanced considerably (close-ups in "Up" of fabric, fur, and hair, are stunning). But, it looks as though Pixar has hired one set of CGI characters and now has them all fulfilling their multi-movie contracts. If you saw "The Incredibles," you will feel as though you've seen these characters before (perhaps, if you've also seen "Toy Story," the same way you felt you'd seen those characters before when you saw "The Incredibles"). In a way, even "Finding Nemo" and "Cars" look like they all came from the same factory as this film. Well, they did, but... why should they? The exaggerated features, cartoonish proportions, and overstated gaits (a kind of bunny-hop if the character is young, a Frankenstein's-monster sort of lumber, if elderly) are starting to look very familiar. (Although, inexplicably, given how far the technology has come, the designers feel compelled to include elements, such as Mr. Frederick's slightly polygonal ears, that appear to be concessions to the computer's historical role in films of this kind.)
The story itself is flawed, alas. No spoilers here, but it did seem that the main character's emotional responses to events around him were inconsistent, as were his physical abilities. He chooses sides in the (dramatically necessary) conflict, but not the one it seemed that he would have, at least not at first. Also, while the idea that he can fly his house via thousands of helium balloons is well within the accepted tropes of the cartoon genre, it lingers on way too long and becomes an intrusively absurd aspect of the whole film, with scene after scene making it harder and harder not to say, "Oh, come on now!" In fairness, there are a couple of moments that will bring tears to adult eyes, proving that this medium really can deliver emotional content. If only there were more of that, and less of the outright nonsense, I'd have scored this film much higher.
Pixar broke the mold, decades ago. But now they've replaced it with a new one. What once seemed so daring and new, has become ho-hum and commonplace. A cynic, just maybe, would say, "Hey, they know what sells." A shame, given that an animator--using a computer or not--is, in the end, not limited by the laws of physics, but only by our willingness to suspend our disbelief.