One of the pleasures of summer is the arrival of the newest Pixar movie. (Remember "
Ratatouille" and "
WALL-E"!) What with traveling all over the place I've had to wait on this year's, but first chance I had I was in a cinema watching this year's treat, "
Up." It's lovely, but I'll have to disagree with the
Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan (with whom I agree more than any other critic) and agree with the snarky reviewer for the
San Diego Weekly Reader (who likes almost nothing) and say it's a minor work. Full of imagination and wit, yes - no need for PG-13 guffaws. Taking on unpromising topics - a 78-year-old man escaping the threat of a nursing home by inflating helium balloons to fly him and his house to South America - yes. Moving without being sentimental, yes. Nods to great movies past (even Werner Herzog's "Fitzcaraldo"!!). And, like all the Disney animated films (this is an underappreciated fact, I think - don't tell the Family Research Council), about alternative families. But
what struck me about this one is how it floats up right alongside Clint Eastwood's in every other respect entirely different "Gran Torino" in presenting the unlikely bond beyond between a white widower and
a fatherless Asian-American boy as a vision of how America's past might survive into the future. Omoshiroi ne, this aperçu. A Pacific Rim insight, I dare say. And not noticed by the critics and pundits, who are unlikely to have seen both films. (I admit I only watched "Gran Torino" because I was in an airplane, but am very glad to have seen it. It's a great film.)
what struck me about this one is how it floats up right alongside Clint Eastwood's in every other respect entirely different "Gran Torino" in presenting the unlikely bond beyond between a white widower and 
a fatherless Asian-American boy as a vision of how America's past might survive into the future. Omoshiroi ne, this aperçu. A Pacific Rim insight, I dare say. And not noticed by the critics and pundits, who are unlikely to have seen both films. (I admit I only watched "Gran Torino" because I was in an airplane, but am very glad to have seen it. It's a great film.) 