I’m loathe to say it, but even on a second viewing (which I felt necessary for this movie before reviewing), I still had a real failure of disbelief suspension in parts that made total connection with the movie ultimately impossible, thus preventing me from giving it the high rating that’s best moments have me wishing I could give. Don’t get me wrong – Up is a beautiful movie, and if it turns out to be the first computer animated movie to be nominated for Best Picture as I’ve heard it might, I’ll be pleased (heck, anything’s better than 4/5 of last year’s nominees) – but there is a definite, undeniable lack of consistency here which I’ve felt before in Pixar movies but never so much as I did here.

It begins, as you’ve probably heard, with a sweeping view of the “curmudgeonly” (as he appears in the trailer: actually, I was pleasantly surprised by how lovable and involved the character is) hero’s life up to, as Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode might describe it, an “unpleasant event” which I won’t reveal except to say that the cut that follows the end of this opening is really where my problem with the movie begins. It’s a tactless cut, from 10 minutes of film making that has been proven to make the most hardened viewer bawl their eyes out, that those children who actually understand it will need days to recover from, into quirky, light comedy. I found myself even on the second viewing at this point wanting to shake the screen, “you just can’t do this following what you just showed me!”

But settle into the rest of the story you must, and what lies beyond this heartbreakingly real opening is a world you really couldn’t foresee. The trailer shows all of the unlikely rabble you’ll meet joining our elderly hero as he tries to navigate his balloon-lifted house to a “land lost in time” where he and his childhood sweetheart once dreamed they’d live. There’s an overweight scout just looking to get his “assisting the elderly” badge, a giant and ludicrously colourful bird and a dog equipped with a hi-tech collar that enables him to talk.

It’s not the unlikely nature of these characters’ presence that bugged me, and I grew to love all of them and they all have moments that hook into the movie’s foremost philosophy. What bothers me is that none of this gels with the genuinely gutwrenching reality of the way the story starts. There’s nothing to suggest, in the manner of The Wizard of Oz did, say, that when Carl’s house takes off that we’ve entered any kind of fantasy; and there’s so much that follows this point, slapdash treatment of physics etc (Carl seems unbelievably spritely considering he relies so much on a stick, eg), that really took me out of the flow of the movie. I know that some reading this will feel I’m being even more curmudgeonly than Carl seems in the trailer … but I don’t say this like it totally ruined the movie for me, because it didn’t; I won’t, however, avoid saying it just because I know how those people will read it. I just would’ve expected Pixar to make all of these shifts in tone, from the absurdly distressing to the distressingly absurd, gel better. It’s not the first time, either.

It’s hard to get mad at the movie, though, and while other computer animated (especially 3D) movies are still being made that rely on the tried and true combined with celebrity voices, you have to bow down to Pixar for continuing to make movies like this that make you think, while the end credits roll, “I can’t believe they got away with selling that as a kids movie,” lol. It is, if only for it’s most emotional moments, easily one of the studio’s best; but like so many of their “best” (for me, they have yet to top Finding Nemo) it’s mostly of predictably high quality. Pixar have such a high and consistent standard I feel compelled to demand more from them. They have proven over and over that they have enormous reserves of creativity and originality, but here more than anywhere it feels like they have just thrown it slapdash at a wall with little of the old Disney storytelling machine to hold it together. I would love if they would try to reign it in and try to distill it down more for their next project, because they really should be making flawless movies by now.

Tags: age, animation, CG, Disney, Pixar

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