Up is overrated. It could hardly be otherwise: the average critic appears to be describing it as one of the best movies of the year, when in fact it is merely the movie which is guaranteed an Oscar, while DreamWorks provides the movie it beats in the "Best Animated Feature" category.
Up is a flawed masterpiece, and I say this about a movie that made me cry, that I will buy the moment it is released on DVD, and that I will surely watch and re-watch. Without spoiling anything, it is a movie that has set-pieces both large and small that make it mandatory viewing for any animation fan, and nearly mandatory for any film buff. And with that said, everything below this line is ridden with spoilers.
The opening act is rightly gaining a ton of praise. The idea of a span-of-life montage is not new, but this one is a master class in affective film-making and was powerfully true to life. I think a lot of critics must figure that whatever happens from then on, the movie has earned your $11 and popcorn right there, and I agree.
The rest of the movie is not bad. Heck, after being the best coming-of-old-age tale you'll see this year in the first act, it then becomes the best talking-dog movie you'll ever see in the second act. And when swashes are buckled and the villain is fought, you'll cheer at the appropriate times. Like I said, go see it!
But I kept wondering why a guy who worked in a zoo all his life objected to the live-trapping of a bird. Or the deus ex machina quality to so much of the second half of the plot. Or the complete failure to explain how Carl's once-noble hero had gone completely Col. Kurtz by the time we meet him (though as I write this, I begin to suspect that's exactly what the film-makers were trying to allude to: he became Col. Kurtz).
And so what. Also: lifting the house would require 12 million balloons, and thankyou IMDB trivia for spoiling that dream. But so many deft touches appear in the movie. As well as being a great gag, Alpha's initial chipmunk voice is a terrific way of taking the edge off of an otherwise too-menacing character (he's just a dog, after all). Every line the dogs spoke rang true, and seriously, that's a tremendous compliment.
Go see it. The film is not perfect. I still don't fully understand the character arc of Charles Muntz. I think Carl should have looked through Ellie's scrapbook earlier. I think Carl was too tied to the house (metaphorically and literally) at some points, but that was the point, really. Some of the plot MacGuffins were just too contrived. Better than the plot contrivances of, oh, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, but not up to the standard of great movies. Except, of course, the ones that depended on highly contrived MacGuffins.
It was amazing. But it was imperfect.
Addendum: This review more sensibly summarizes my complaints. I read it after writing mine, but I agree with almost every word.
Comments
On the live bird question...
You raise a good point about the bird. It strikes me that the filmmakers were making a lot of assumptions (or asking us to make them). In particular, that this was meant to be a very rare or endangered bird (in shape, it resembles a giant, long legged dodo) or that the villain was going to kill the bird and present its skeleton to the world (as he did at the beginning of the film, and his trophy room was full of them).
The film conspicuously avoids the discussion of the bird's fate that would be so common in other animated films. It's a question I'd put to one of the film's creators.
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