What I really appreciate about Pixar movies is the care and attention that goes into each one. It takes years to make these CGI movies (although you don't always remember, considering the fact scheduling and manpower now delivers one, sometimes two, a year), so they daren't rush into things and get it wrong. I have yet to be truly disappointed by a Pixar effort -- a key reason why I've intentionally avoided seeing Cars, to be honest -- and even my concerns about Ratatouille (a rat that likes to cook?) proved unfounded.
Up is their latest offering this summer; a fantastical adventure where an elderly man takes to the skies in his house, pulled into the air by thousands of balloons, with a chubby boy scout as his unwanted sidekick. Oh, and there's a dog that can talk thanks to a translating collar. It all looks fabulous, as you'd expect. I'm sensing some Roald Dahl in the mix (thanks to the James & The Giant Peach similarity), combined with the kind of imaginative beauty Hayao Miyazaki dreams up. Indeed, if this was hand-drawn animation populated by anime characters, I can see this as the kind of material the Howl's Moving Castle director would be attracted to. Up's use of a house as its vehicle to globe-trotting adventure echoes Miyazaki's walking castle from Howl's, too.
Gorgeous animation, a sense of fun, and there were already three or four moments in the trailer that made me chuckle (the talking dog, the old classic of a fat kid squeaking across a window, etc.) And maybe The Saturdays could re-release their single "Up" to try and break America on the back of this? Or not.
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