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Up (Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson, 2009)

After loving Wall-E so much, I knew I would have to see this one eventually. I’ve actually never missed seeing a Pixar movie in theaters, even though I did take me a little bit longer to finally get around to seeing this one. I didn’t think I would like this one as much, though, because the trailer didn’t have me all that interested. Don’t get me wrong, it looked interesting, but too childish for me. As it turns out, it ended up being one of Pixar’s deepest movies so far. I’ve noticed that recently with Pixar anyways, as they’ve been getting more-and-more serious with each new movie from them. I sort of hope that doesn’t happen with Toy Story 3 next year, though, because the Toy Story movies were never really meant to be all that serious. Up explores with a lot of deeper and more mature themes than you would usually expect from a Pixar film, with death being the main one.

Even though this one is pretty serious and does focus on more mature themes, of course it wouldn’t a Pixar film without some great laughs thrown in there as well. The dog Dug and the bird Kevin being the main things from the movie that delivered most of the laughs, at least to me. The laughs never really get to the point of being too childish, either, because I’m not a child and I laughed quite a bit throughout the movie. I don’t laugh at a lot of the kiddy potty humor jokes, either. Of course the main thing that shines for this is its amazing visuals of course. Pixar’s animation just keeps improving with each new film they push out. I think the animation in this one just barely passes that of Wall-E’s. Like any of Pixar’s other films, though, the main thing that helps drive their films is the story behind the movie. The wonderful imagination from the writers at Pixar is really what makes their films special.

I loved how they added Carl’s back-story into the first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie, because it really helps you love and feel sad for his character. During his back-story is when the death theme gets kicked into, too. This is probably Pixar’s most adventurous film yet, though. As soon as Carl’s house sets out with Russell the adventure doesn’t stop at all, until the credits hit. The entire movie leads up to an incredibly pleasing climax that I was hoping to for the entire movie. I already knew who the villain was going to be from the first 5 minutes of the movie, though. I thought it was pretty obvious, even though you didn’t actually find out who it was until right before the climax. I love how the real meaning of the movie kicks in at the end of the movie: that Carl’s adventure had already happened, it wasn’t his trip in Paradise Falls, but instead the live he lived. His entire live he got to spend with Ellie was his true adventure.

I ended up walking out of the theater very pleased that I got a chance to see this before it left theaters, because had I missed it, I would’ve been very disappointed. As far as ranking it against other of Pixar’s films, I’d put it right behind The Incredible and tied for second with Wall-E. I also heard that the short movie before Up, Partly Cloudy, wasn’t as great as some of the short movies before Pixar’s previous films, but I enjoyed it. I laughed through it the entire 5 minutes, and it got pretty sad at times during it, too. I’d recommend trying to catch this one before it leaves theaters, because I’m sure that you won’t be disappointed. I think Pixar always seems to create a movie that I feel almost anyone can enjoy.

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