arsenicnet

Will Leitch hits the nail on the head here perfectly about UP, which I saw today.

He writes:

The first 15 minutes of Up are absolutely devastating. That’s no reason not to take a kid to it: You’ll be more disturbed by it than they will. We are talking about a mainstream Disney children’s movie which opens with a couple learning that they cannot have children, followed shortly by the death of a beloved spouse. It is never cheap, but it is certainly maximized for waterworks: Comparatively speaking, the pathos of About Schmidt, which began with a similar plotpoint (and in many odd ways is a similar movie), is understated. A kid might breeze by this — the montage of the Fredericksen marriage is nearly wordless — but you certainly won’t, and the message is clear: This is an animated movie about profound loss and grief.

Don’t tell anyone. I  cried like a baby. At a Pixar film. Not just at the beginning, but in the end too. Our secret, ok?

I wonder if my 7-year-old took much away from that sequenceand from the film overall (he said he liked it a lot), but as a newly 33-year-old, married with children, it just seemed to hit home more then WALL-E, which I liked, and other Pixar films have, except maybe for Nemo, which addresses maybe my biggest fear as a parent - losing a child.

I very much liked this film. It was also the first recent film I’ve seen in 3-D, new to our local cineplex. The depth of the images was amazing, and they didn’t often milk the 3-D for cheap, wow-that-spear-is-in-my-face type moments. Definitely check this film out, just be warned, it’s not just a slap-stick kids movie.

Here’s something else - Pixar movies are beautiful to watch. So much thought must go into every single detail, and it shows. With each movie they make, the productions values get better and better and you feel part of the story.