Up reviewed

This is really obvious but I really like the Pixar movies.  Everyone of one them that I see (barring Monsters Inc. and A Bug's Life since I haven't seen them) I, at the very worst, like and some of them I love very much, like Wall-E.  However, my hopes were not high when I sat down to watch Up.  For one thing, the very first promotional photo that Pixar gave me visions of Waterworld, but in the air...which isn't a bad thing since I love Waterworld. When I read the plot though, it didn't sound like Air Waterworld at all.  And then I saw Wall-E, which is the absolute pinnacle of Pixar, CGI-Animated movies and 2008 movies which made me think, "How could Pixar follow-up?"  So did they do it in a successful way?  Let's find out as we dig into Up.

The movie revolves around Carl Fredrickson, an elderly man, who recently lost his wife.  They made a promise to go to Paradise Falls in South America but life always got in the way.  Now Carl, grumpy and alone, has lost his house due to some horribly non-wacky hijinks and is due to be sent to a retirement home.  So he gets a lot of balloons and heads down to Paradise Falls but somehow he got an Asian Wilderness Explorer Scout in his house.  Eventually they make it, but the adventure is only beginning.

There is one thing that Up has that stands head and shoulders over the rest of Pixar's films.  That thing is Carl, who is the best human protagonist in a Pixar movie, granted the only real competition is Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles.  His character arc is one of the best that Pixar has ever done starting him as a nice, optimistic and caring husband down to a grumpy old guy back to caring due to his many lessons learned at Paradise Falls.  Carl is truly, one of the most fully realized characters that Pixar has ever created and certainly the best human one.

What really sells this is the voice-acting, especially by Ed Asner who voices Carl.  Not once did I think of Carl as Ed Asner or even Cosgrove even though I would kill to hear this "Hey Freakazoid, you wanna help me put balloons on my house so I can get to South America?"  He injects Carl with the humanity and pathos of his journey so well that Carl wouldn't have worked half as well if it wasn't for Asner.  Another character of note is Dug, the dog voiced by co-director Bob Petersen who's the funniest thing about the movie.  Dug is both a Cloud Cuckoolander and Captain Obvious but it totally works and Petersen plays it to perfecSQUIRREL....heh, heh sorry.

However, there are some flaws that do drag Up down.  First of all, it's a bit too short.  The last few Pixar movies have been over 100 minutes, giving the various stories time to breathe and feel real.  Up clocks in at 96 minutes and by the second half I felt things were a bit too rushed as everything gets wrapped up in a neat bow.  I probably won't have much of a problem if this came out before the epics like Incredibles or Wall-E but after them, it just looks like a step back.  Also, this kinda does suffer from some logic-holes that I saw during the movie.  I know about Suspension of Disbelief and moving the story along but it just kinda bothered me.

In the end though, Up was really good even though it ranks in the middle of Pixar films.  It succeeds at everything it sets out to do and it plucks the right emotions with one of Pixar's best characters.  It does misstep in the second half and there's some stuff I never quite liked but that's just fairly minor quibbles.  It might not be as good as the Toy Stories, Cars or Wall-E but it is still great family entertainment.

8/10