Up

Sometimes it feels like Pixar is conducting an experiment to find the most unconventional children's movie protagonist.  After failing to alienate young audiences with a non-verbal robot in Wall-E, they've up the ante with a crotchety old widower in Up.  They're almost daring kids to squirm in their seats.  And yet, they don't, which is testament to the gold-plated instincts for storytelling that drive every Pixar project.  The aforementioned crotchety widower is Carl Fredrickson who decides to honor a promise to his recently deceased wife and travels to a mysterious South American mountain by strapping his house to a giant bundle of helium balloons. Of course, it wouldn't be Pixar without bracing emotional content, so the viewer is introduced to Carl's wife and witnesses a touching, expertly detailed recap of her life...and then her funeral...and Carl sitting heartbroken in their empty house.  Guys know how to stick it in and break it off, don't they?

What all this brutal heartstring-pulling does is give Carl's journey with emotional weight and create instant audience identification with a character that a lot of kids might initially find off-puttingly old and cranky.  It also gives the movie it's thematic ballast, which is less ambitious than recent Pixar films like Ratatouille and Wall-E.   Although the "live-in-the-moment" message is familiar, it's brought across with remarkable subtlety.  There's no "too late I realize me children where my real treasure" speech, just a collection of silent, metaphor-heavy moments that must fly over the heads of younger kids.  What's impossible to miss is the richly textured animation, made even more rivetting by nifty 3-D effects.  There aren't any cheesy gotcha 3-D gimmick shots, but the depths of field make a lot of the action, which takes place at vertiginous altitudes, literally breathtaking.  It's a simple story, told with immense detail and a keen eye for both pathos and comedy business, but after the Shakespearean heights reached by recent Pixar efforts, Up can't help but feel like a minor, but still powerful, outing.