Up (2009)

Last Wednesday Jack & I had sort of planned to see The Stoning of Soraya M., which we knew would be depressing, and I was contemplating writing about it and The Ugly Truth together, which would have been a quite the study in contrasts. But, instead, we went for an animated feature; specifically one that may be nominated for a few Oscars (we are both on a board that comments on the Oscars each February for our local newspaper, and, because of this, we have seen more animated movies in the past 3 years than in all of the years since our kids outgrew them). We had a grand time, with no children in tow (though there were some in the theatre at our summer matinee). Director/writer Pete Docter (directed Monsters, Inc. (2001) and got credit for contributing to the stories of both Toy Story movies (1995 and 99), Monsters, Inc., and WALL-E) joined with director/writer Bob Peterson (first time director, wrote the screenplay for the charming Finding Nemo (2003), and was credited for additional story material in Ratatouille) (all in the preceding sentence are blockbuster animated movies produced by Pixar, if you didn't know, and you probably did) for this entertaining Pixar fantasy of an old man, Carl (Ed Asner, who was in six episodes of the aforementioned Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, three of the now-ended brilliant animated series The Boondocks, and 200 other things besides The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Lou Grant), who sets his house aloft with helium balloons, and has a boy scout named Russell as a stowaway. They missed the opportunity to make a helium-voice joke, even though, for a little while, you may think there is one, but there are a ton of other great gags, and the second half has a pack of talking dogs that are still making us giggle from time to time. This is suitable for all ages except the very young, because of some danger, one injury, and one death, and the crazy hanging out over ledges that made this acrophobe squirm just a little, even in animation. Preceded by a short cartoon called Partly Cloudy (not the same as the upcoming feature Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which is Sony, not Pixar), a wordless trifle about storks picking up and delivering babies fashioned by cloud-people, that had us wondering if we were in the right theatre.