Movie Review: UP

Pixar departed from their usual fare with the movie "UP". Over the years we've grown used to them doing comedy. Yeah, OK, "The Incredibles" was more of superhero/comedy and "Wall-E" was a sci-fi/comedy. Well, "UP" is a sad/comedy.

Not two minutes into the movie and you can already see that it's building up to an obvious ploy to get the viewers to cry. Very few characters in this movie have a happy back story. With some of the cheap tricks they use to play with the viewers' emotions I'd say they're trying to get an Academy Award.

What we have in this story is an old man who is losing everything. His wife is dead. Some people are trying to take his house. He's old. Rather than get sent to a retirement home he decides to fulfill a promise he made to his late wife and take the house to a remote wilderness that their mutual hero once explored. He does this by attaching a zillion balloons to the house and flying it there.

Naturally, things go wrong. A scout was on his porch when he took off. They hit a storm. They land somewhere close, but not right. A large bird adopts them. Talking dogs chase them. Strange people try to kill them.

Really, all that needs to be said is that it's a Pixar movie. Pixar doesn't make bad movies.

Along those lines I should also mention that Disney is doing another hand drawn cartoon. A few years back Disney completely dismantled their old hand animation department. They saw that the digitally animated movies of Pixar, Dreamworks, and others were doing well while their own stuff tended to be pretty awful. They made the assumption that the important thing was the animation technique and that the story was secondary (or less). They made "Chicken Little" which wasn't bad, but it sure as hell wasn't good. Realizing that they could no longer compete in their core business, cartoons, Disney paid Pixar to take over their animation division. Right off the bat Pixar brought back the hand animation department.

A trailer before "UP" shows that Disney is releasing The Princes and the Frog. Looks like they're trying to get back into what proved to be a winner for Disney in the past. In the past they've remade classic fairy tales such as Snow White, Cinderella, Pinocchio, and the like. Now they're doing The Frog Prince.

I enjoyed "UP" but I will not be getting it on DVD. It's good, but I don't collect sad movies.