Yeah, that came off as a bit of an overextension.

Oddly the part that kept troubling me (though not in any way I wasn't willing to ignore is that the entire house is suspended from the grate in his fireplace. Why that bothered me (again: minimally) but all the other impossible physics didn't I haven't a clue.

I thought the grand quest lost a little poetic oomph the longer it went on and mundane details like how long the balloons would stay inflated came into play.

That said, I thought it was better than Ratatouille, which was half filled with zany, animated peril for its own sake and had a very unlikeable main (human) character.

Similar to that, it kinda bugged me where the balloons could have been "hiding" before they just rose up "behind" the house to astound the nursing home workers.

Eh, didn't much matter if I'm going to buy a floating house buoyed by standard balloons, whether or not controlled via fireplace.


As praised by none other than Alex ... once they fixed the Alpha Dog's collar, the intelligence of the screenwriters in not overplaying a joke allowed for any of the subsequent unbelievable shenanigans to be completely accepted on this end.

Oh, and I agree about what bothered Flippy. I thought the same thing when they appeared and again when they were dispatched in a similarly clumsy way. I was, however, willing to buy into the talking dog collars because 1) it was funnier and 2) it seemed an apt expression of the explorer's screwed up priorities.

And did anyone else think Carl looked like Spencer Tracy from "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?"

Yes, in fact, I read a couple of reviews commenting on the similarity. Maybe Spencer would have voiced the role if the movie had been made a few decades ago.

I also wanted Kirk Douglas for Muntz. That seems to be who they animated. I would have accepted the slurring, after all Muntz must be 90+.

I am so glad word of mouth was good or I may have skipped this one altogether. It was a Pixar fairy tale and I loved it. It touches upon the transitory nature of all human relationships (how they are beautiful, tragic, wonderful and heartbreaking), accomplishing in its first 10 minutes what Benjamin Button failed to do in 2+ hours.

Once I get to a laptop (on the iPhone right now), I will post a more thorough review. I thought it was excellent. But I like Ratatouille, Nemo and the Incredibles better. I thought the first act was great but like Wall E, once more characters and dialogue came into play, the luster faded for me. Loved the two main characters and the dog.

I thought Muntz had more of a Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. look.

I'm in the camp of liking the Pixar "silents" less than the talkies. I admire the no-dialogue achievements of the UP montage and the Wall-E first half. But I think those are easy to achieve with animation. Comparisons to live action on this score are not fair.

I think it's harder to achieve animation excellence with dialogue-driven stories or segments, and I do in fact prefer the 3 Gemini Cricket mentioned over UP or Wall-E. But there we go ranking children again. To say I prefer Finding Nemo over UP ignores that I prefer UP over just about any movie I've seen in the last couple of years.