A real movie

Rating: 9/10 (27 January 2013)

'Up', the latest delightful animated film from Pixar, combines whimsicality, beautiful graphics and a lot of laughs. It follows in the spirit of previous Pixar movies, most obviously its immediate predecessor 'WALL-E', but has something of its own flavour too - although the medium is different, there are elements of this film that would not have been out of place in Nick Park's 'Wallace and Grommit' films. What really has impressed many people about Pixar's films, and which certainly impressed me about this one, is not just that they feature groundbreaking animation, but they are put together with a real auteur's eye: look for the quality of the scene composition, or the way that the final images of one scene fit visually and thematically with the starting images of the next, and it's clear that this is a film made by people who know how to make movies (although for once, John Lasseter himself is not directing, and the job is done instead by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson). And ask yourself, have many mainstream Hollywood blockbusters feature two (sympathetic) characters as unglamourous as a childless widower and a fat kid? This is a gentle movie, for sure; but also a genuinely funny one, and oddly, in spite of its fantastical story, a certain grounding in truth actually lacking in most live action Hollywood films.