Up, 2009

It's hard to find a bad review of this movie. I went searching for some only because I couldn't pinpoint just what it was about the film that didn't move me.

Everyone else loves it -- the Tomato-Metre gives it 98%. It's got everyone caught up in its sense of adventure, and while, for the most part, I was also caught up, I'm wondering why, days later, I don't feel the need to watch it again.

Wall.E, Cars, and A Bug's Life were all movies I knew I had to buy. And re-watches of Toy Story never get boring. And Monsters Inc is just genius. Why didn't I feel that way about Up? I've read all those bad reviews on Rotten Tomatoes -- all six that were negative out of about 250 -- and I'm still not sure what it is about the film I didn't love.

Don't get me wrong, though -- it was a very good film, and I laughed, and I cried, and all those other things you're suposed to do in a Pixar film. But maybe the cantankerous old man who's lost his sense of adventure just wasn't enough to grip at my heartstrings over a basic tug?

Little Wall.E the robot still makes me well up every time I look at him. I see him and I think of wonder and adventure and love. When I see Eve from Wall.E, I think about innocence. Carl Frederickson from Up just makes me think of Ed Asner. And the little round kid who follows him into the air makes me think of all those other little round companions that have tagged along in these films for comic effect. Russell the Boy Scout is this film's Dory, this film's Mater. As wonderfully creative as Pixar is, it can still fall horribly back on cliche, even its own cliches.

Old man finds spirit of adventure thanks to a charmingly silly boy scout, some talking dogs, and a big bird who likes chocolate. God, it frustrates me that even though other Pixar films are just as standard, why did this one not bowl me over? It was very good, it just wasn't... something.

I'll keep thinking.