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WonderCon 2009: 'Up' flies away

I got to see about 17 minutes of the film via five scenes Pixar debuted. My impressions after viewing the clips is that the movie looks very good--visually, conceptually, and just for pure entertainment.

Eric Franklin Former Editorial Director
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Eric Franklin
2 min read

Pixar

Pixar showed the first 45 minutes of its next animated feature "Up" at WonderCon here in San Francisco this weekend. I did not see all of those minutes, due to there being some limited-to-first-250-people-to-come BS I didn't have the patience to deal with.

I did get to see about 17 minutes of the film, however, via five scenes Pixar debuted. My impressions after viewing the clips is that the movie looks very good--visually, conceptually, and just for pure entertainment.

"Up" deals with a curmudgeonly old man tying a bunch of balloons to his house and flying away, only to find out he has a stowaway in the form of a 10-year-old Boy Scout. The two travel the world, getting into adventures.

While the style of the CGI is very cartoonish, each character exhibited convincing facial expressions.

Most of the scenes were charming, and some very funny. There are some interesting editing techniques and some semi-dark humor on display that I was somewhat surprised at. I thought about giving a rundown of each scene, but they wouldn't be anywhere near as funny with me explaining them.

I will say the dogs are hilarious. My favorite bit was when the dogs were all talking in a group about something important in the story and all three simultaneously stop mid-sentence, yell "squirrel!" and look off camera for a beat. It's as if they're saying sure, they're intelligent enough to talk and have free thought, but they're still dogs. See, not nearly as funny as it is onscreen.