UP! and Away?

My family took an open opportunity last night to take in the Mouse/Lamps latest movie creation: UP!.  Most of you already know the story about the movie or have seen it, so I don’t get into any plot discussions. 

My take on the movie is frankly a torn one.  The first 40-45 minutes were fantastic.  That part, in general, was movie making at it’s best and Pixar at truly the top of it’s game.  The story moved nicely, it was very poetic and poignant in places, and the general character development was pretty decent.  This part was only marred slightly, in my opinion, by the semi-unusual choice for how Pete Doctor and crew chose to display the executives constructing the building around the home of Carl Fredricksen.  They look like aliens...which I though was a strange choice.

The second half of the film on the other hand left me wanting for closure, for a lack of a better term.  Michael Barrier and others have been even less kind.  I don’t think I’d call it a disaster, but it left me with more questions than answers and generally just ended in a jumbled mess of quickly ended storylines.  The bad guy, dead; the dad, a jerk; the bird, a girl with her family to raise; the dog, a home; the curmudgeon, a ‘grand dad’.  My 2 year old thought the first half was ‘cool’, she thought the second half, with vicious dogs and guns wasn’t so much fun, so she and I left the theatre for about 15 minutes or so and came back in for the last 5-10 minutes.

I suspect that the story issues are mostly because of the pressures being on a schedule puts one under.  Toy Story was really good only because the guys making it realized at some point exactly how bad it was and then basically decided to re-do the entire movie.  I’m not trying to imply that UP! deserved that same treatment, but maybe 5 months more or so would have left them some room to work on the plot a little more.  Or even 5-10 minutes more movie.

Disney may get folks to go and watch it twice in 3D and in 2D, but unfortunately beyond that I don’t feel myself being drawn to run out and see it again.  I’m not hearing much different on the internet.

UP! will do pretty well, but I honestly think it’ll make about what Wall-E did when it’s all done.  According to Box Office Mojo, Wall-E made about $534 million world wide with it’s predecessor Ratatouille coming in at about $621 million (which is about the general range of all the Pixar movies when you look at it I guess). 

I’d peg this one somewhere in between when the dust finally settles, which makes an estimated $180 million film a decent win at about 3x production costs, but it won’t be a run-a-way hit.  That’s still at least 1 multiple better than the last Disney animated movie Bolt! (which for my money was actually pretty decent).