You can’t draw the villain to look like Terence Stamp and then make him sound like Christopher Plummer.
On the other hand, Terence Stamp’s voice would give little kids nightmares.
I bawled like a baby through the whole thing. I think I might have cried more times than I laughed! I’ve never cried so much at a movie before. It was kinda like when we went to Pan’s Labyrinth expecting a fairy tale…
It had two really emotionally parts, (the montage of Carl and Ellie’s life together and Ellie’s adventure book), and I can see getting misty at some of the Dug stuff (“Bad dog!” and “I hid under the porch because I love you!”). But it also has some wonderfully funny bits, so you’ll get a full emotional workout.
The part where the chairs fall over and Carl sets them back in place and looks at them sadly got to me too. My grandparents each had their own recliner like that, and when my grandmother died and we had to get my grandfather to a smaller apartment, he chose to keep her chair instead of his. So that scene really resonated with me!
Of course, there is the secondary Star Wars reference when they all hear “Squirrel” and the three planes smash into each other (Vader and his two wingmen).
Ooooh, that’s true!! I hadn’t thought of that!!
Oops. You are right. I don’t know why I didn’t remember Boundin’.
Okay, amended rule: Almost every short shown with a feature has no dialogue (exception Boundin’) Almost every short made for the DVD (involving characters from the feature) does have dialogue (exception BURN-E).
There, I think I got it covered.
The part that really got to me (other than the ones people mentioned already) was when Carl went out to get his mail and paused to put his hand on Ellie’s handprint on the side of the mailbox. Just a little throwaway thing, but so perfect.
I thought he looked like Kirk Douglas.
It was neither, in my opinion. For one thing, Muntz’s descent into madness is logical given the events of the film.
And it certainly was not pointless. In fact, without Muntz, the move LOSES much of its point. Muntz’s obsession with finding the snipe, or whatever you want to call the bird, was thematically central to the entire movie. The film is deliberately contrasting Muntz and Carl - two old men near the end, both of whom feel their lives are incomplete. In the case of Muntz it’s because he hasn’t found his snipe and greatness was taken from him; in the case of Carl, he feels he was never great enough because he was never like Muntz. More specifically, he feels he failed his wife by not being like Muntz.
But what we find at the end is that Carl was, in fact, the more successful one, because he was loved. It was Carl, not Muntz, who lived a life worth living, because he had Ellie; while Muntz was futilely pursuing his white whale, as the world moved on and forgot about him, Carl was enjoying a life that wasn’t what he’d originally hoped for but was more than happy enough. The man from the newsreels was the failure; the man who watched them and lived a humble life was the success. In the end it’s also how he defeats Muntz, because he cares for others and Muntz does not, but that’s just what makes it a happy ending and not a dark one. What matters is that Carl succeeded without realizing he was doing it, while Muntz’s life was a lonely failure because of his obsession with greatness. It is not accidental that Muntz’s conveyance of choice was a zeppelin - a huge, brash, white whale of a vehicle - while Carl’s is his house.
Well, you say “potato.” 
I could’ve sworn I said that.
MrWhatsit is effectively blind in one eye (he has a bit of peripheral vision in it, but nothing else) and does the pigeon-bobbing thing too, especially when driving. It’s pretty subtle, though.
We do go to the 3-D movies for the kids, and he usually wears the glasses, not because they allow him to see 3-D, but because they filter out the “wrong-eye” input and allow him to see the movie in normal 2-D as opposed to the weird color-blurred image that you see without any 3-D glasses at all.
More on topic, I loved “Up.” I suspect that it will not be one of my kids’ favorite Pixar films – they are 7, 5, and 2, and thematically this film had a lot of weighty issues, as mentioned above. Don’t get me wrong; they all had a great time and loved the film. But I don’t see them asking us to watch it over and over again like Cars or Toy Story. I, on the other hand, thought it was one of the best animated films I’ve seen in recent memory.
“But I am not Alpha! He is Alpha! …ooohhhh.”
On re read, yes, you did. I expanded on it, but I should have noted you made the same point first.
“Up” is an example of what good screenwriting really is. People often seem to think “screenwriting” equals “dialogue,” and therefore will credit a mediocre script with good dialogue, like “Serenity,” as being a good script. But a good script is 95% about things other than dialogue. “Up” delivers the goods without using a lot of dialogue and without tiring the viewer out with a lot of flat exposition. In a multitude of places it, like all good movies, shows rather than tells. It uses visual metaphors both subtle and obvious but blends them in to the story.
To use one great example, Carl dragging his house around on the Paradise Falls escarpment is about as in-your-face a piece of symbolism as has ever been put on screen. It doesn’t get a lot more obvious than that; an old man, having only his possessions and memories left, who is literally tied to his house and dragging it around. And yet it doesn’t feel like they’re beating you over the head with it because it’s tied perfectly into the story; in the context of the story him pulling the house around makes sense.
The scene in which he has to literally jettison the dead weight from his house, and starts madly flinging old furniture, knick-knacks, etc., out the front door, where they smash onto the ground, was amazing. I wanted to cheer. Yeah, the symbolism was obvious but that didn’t make it work any less for me.
I actually expected to see Muntz alive in the jungle at the end. When they showed the house back up at the top of the falls I thought maybe Muntz would be there cleaning up, but I guess it would be creepy to show him at Carl’s house.
Yes! Exactly. I think this is what impressed me most about the movie. And I’m sure it’s been said already, but that opening sequence was an amazingly brilliant bit of storytelling.
Quite alright. 
OK, maybe I’m thick, but I just now realized the parallel there: at the beginning of the film, when Carl wants Russell to go away, he sends the lad on a snipe hunt. 
It’s hard to think of a way that Muntz could have been redeemed, so it was probably best just to leave the possibility open that he survived, but not return to him. About the only positive way I can think of that he could have been showed is for Kevin to be caring for him in some fashion - but I think it would be difficult to make that understandable in a brief amount of time, and it would detract from the story to make it longer.
I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I didn’t really notice even the blatantly obvious symbolism of the movie while I was watching it, like Carl literally dragging his house around with him - I was far too wrapped up in the story. Nevertheless, it did touch me on some level below the conscious.