Pixar's Up!

[MrDisco]

It took a while, but I finally got around to seeing Up! in the theatres. From Wiki: "The film centers around a grumpy old man named Carl Fredricksen and an overeager Wilderness Explorer named Russell who fly to South America in a floating house suspended from helium balloons" [to fulfill an old promise he made to his deceased wife.]"

[There is a Pixar short that precedes the film called 'Partly Cloudy'. The clouds in the sky make babies for the animal and human kingdom and send them off to storks for delivery. One cloud has it's feelings hurt and starts to throw a tantrum (thunder & lightning) and then cries (rain). The stork assigned to him cheers him up and the cloud turns back into a white fluffy happy cloud.]

The opening act is a bit of a tear jerker with its near silent montage of young Carl aging through the years with his wife Ellie. The movie moves pretty quickly after that (I believe the run time is 90min) with the two unlikely couple braving the wilds of South America and an unexpected foe.

I have to remind myself that the film is for kids so the story isn't complicated and some scenes are immediately obvious as to what their outcome will be. There's a few in-jokes (from Ratzenberger's continued string of vocal cameos to a homage of Star Wars) to keep the older one's happy, but at the core of the film is Carl and the lesson he learns. Up! may not be funniest (Toy Story) or the flashiest (Cars) but it's still one of the better works. Needless to say the animation is stunning.

A must buy when it comes on Blu-Ray (now available for pre-order including a limited set with luxu jr that holds all of the Pixar Blu-Ray releases)