Director: Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 3.0
A grumbling widower (voiced by Ed Asner and looking like a squat, square-jawed Ed McMahon) pursues his lifelong dream of moving his house to a desolate but scenic part of South America, but on his voyage he gets stuck with a chubby, merit-badge hording Boy Scout, befriends an exotic bird and has a grim encounter with an old childhood hero. Though imaginative and well worth-seeing, it's nonetheless mid-tier Pixar: the old man/young boy dynamic is, no matter how you dress it up, a little stale and the sentimentality is a little strong. The Pixar people are, however, entirely too precise to let their symbols get heavy-handed (the balloon house as a crucifix/Sisyphean boulder, for example - they admit to having watched Herzog's Fitzcarraldo as inspiration) and are sure to balance out the serious component with humor: the Dug character, a dog with a special collar that allows him to speak, is dumb, loyal and a scene-stealer. The ultimate point, about retaining and following through on dreams of youth (so long as those dreams are noble), is important to remember as life takes over and sweeps us where it wishes.
