Movie: UP

[liveonearth]

Pixar's latest release...we just saw it. It's getting four stars in lots of different reviews, but in my rating system it gets a 3 or less. The story is cute: widower's house gets surrounded by city, his dead wife didn't get to do her childhood dream, he feels dissatisfied and is unwilling to "retire" in a "home". So he hooks up his house to a bunch of helium baloons and flies away, house and all, headed for South America where his dead wife's dream can be completed. Probably the best thing about the movie was the spunk of the old man. A boyscout looking for his "helping an elder" badge stows away of the flying house, and they end up having unbelievable and somewhat stupid adventures together in South America, beating the badguys by the skin of their teeth, and returning stateside to claim the coveted service to elder boyscout badge. It's touching, and the story is coherent, but it was for me too outrageous, or silly, or something. It lost me early on. I stuck through the whole show but I don't exactly recommend it. Pixar has made better movies. At least it isn't immoral.

Comments

[lucy-chronicles.livejournal.com]

liked it but my biggest problem was the treating of the kids father or lack thereof.

heaven forbid we have an intact family of dual parents coming out of hollywood.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they really didn't talk. It was exemplary "guy" communication in which the old man doesn't figure out that the kid's family is fubar until past halfway through the movie. It is only obliquely mentioned (kids might not get it) and never brought up again. If there was a lesson to take home from that part of the story, I didn't get it...

[bloomingmom.livejournal.com]

we enjoyed it. though without children i wouldn't have been as taken. and yeah, the whole family mess up is a constant theme in the cartoon adventure movies. at least they didn't shoot them point blank with shotguns like bambi - or kill off the family offstage. that's such a comman theme in these movies. disturbed me as a child - in order to have a fantastic adventure your parents must die. disfuntional seems more probable.