UP... I saw the film last Sunday, and like Pixar’s other animated features, it was great. Call me sentimental (actually, don’t), but I would have to say that the story was pretty, um...heartwarming. That opening montage showing Carl Fredricksen enjoying life with his childhood friend-turned-wife Ellie was nicely done. You definitely see a clear motivation for why Carl would attach, like, thousands of balloons to his house to escape for a flight of adventure: He wanted to keep a life-long promise to his wife (who had long-since passed away) that involved traveling to an exotic and mysterious locale in South America called Paradise Falls.
Ironically, while the filmmakers nicely convey why Carl would leave his neighborhood (that’s an understatement) to do some explorin’, the moment of his departure actually felt kinda rushed. Overlooking the fact this is a 96 minute-long animated feature I’m talking about here, how was Carl able to attach balloons to his house so quickly? Judging from what I got from the film, Carl knew he had to do something drastic the night before folks were suppose to pick him up and send him to the Shady Oaks retirement home. So did Carl attach the balloons to his house overnight? Or were they already attached but he felt he had no use for them till the incident with that construction worker? The movie doesn’t delve into details about that [nor the fact a house floating at wind speed could reach South America (from what I presumed is a North American city) overnight as well]. Anyways...
My favorite characters in Up were actually those 'talking' dogs. Alpha, the Doberman, was the coolest one...but Dug was funny too. Kevin the bird was also hilarious. Russell the Boy Scout was a crack-up as well...but the animals stole the show. I actually think Up was slightly more entertaining than WALL-E (since that film was a bit preachy with that whole 'Protect our environment' theme, especially at the end), but like last year’s Oscar-winning robots-n-romance film, I might get Up on DVD too. We’ll see.
The short film that was shown in front of Up, Partly Cloudy, was also funny. Nice usage of that ‘babies are delivered by Storks’ theme in this clip. Baby eels... Haha.
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