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Up: Not a Movie for Young Kids
Although billed as fun for the whole family, the level of violence in this film is too intense for young children.
By now you’ve read the reviews about Disney/Pixar’s new 3D animated feature film, Up. The reviews are glowing, and they are well deserved. The film is a visual delight, from beginning to end. It pulls at your heartstrings, tickles your funny bone, and makes you simply say “wow” at many of the images.
Be aware: this film is not for young children. It is an adult film.
My wife and I took our seven year old daughter to see it, trusting that, hey, it’s a Disney animated film from the same people that brought us Toy Story. The first ten minutes made me cry. The blood on the forehead of the construction worker raised my eyebrow. The deranged explorer living amongst a pack of talking attack dogs made me nervous. The deranged explorer coming after the protagonists, an old man and a little boy, first with a sword and then with a shotgun, made my daughter climb into my lap and cover her eyes.
Don’t get me wrong, it is a phenomenal film. The acting is first rate…any time you get Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer together in the same play, you’re in for a treat. The pacing on the film is terrific, and Michael Giacchino’s score is both sweet and engaging. And the visual image is simply stunning.
The story line, in a nutshell, is about Carl, a 78 year old man forced to flee from society as a result of a battery charge. Choosing to pursue a fantasy he shared with his now deceased wife, he converts his house into an airship using helium balloons and flies to Venezuela, having acquired the company of an eight year old boy as a result of a cruel joke. In Venezuela he meets up with his lifelong hero, a now deranged adventurer, living with a huge pack of frightening, talking attack dogs. The adventurer, named Muntz, appears to have murdered everyone that has sought him out. After a series of near fatal adventures, the heroes eventually kill Muntz and escape in his airship, returning to society.
The filmmakers are trying to tell us, as they did in The Incredibles, that life’s greatest adventure is in your own backyard…it lies in living and loving, not in flying to the ends of the earth. But what becomes of Muntz, the guy who is a true adventurer, flying off to explore the ends of the earth? Well, he goes insane and lives among talking attack dogs and tries to kill a 78 year old man and an 8 year old kid and eventually falls to his death. What sort of message is that? My kid wants to be an astronaut. What message does this film offer her?
The hint about the film’s adult nature lies in the preceding animated short. Here’s the premise: the clouds actually create the cute little babies delivered by the storks. Some clouds make kitties, some make puppies, some make babies. But this is the story of a hapless stork who is dutifully tied to a genial but dark cloud. The babies he delivers aren’t cute. He gets alligators and porcupines and sharks. The tattered bird continues to show up for work, despite being beaten and stabbed and even electrocuted by the subjects put in his care by his boss. There is a moment when the quills of the baby porcupine pierce the stork’s wings. It’s supposed to be funny, but I found it ghastly, and I heard my little girl sob…”oh!” I was reminded of Tom and Jerry , and Popeye, and those dreadful MGM Baby Huey cartoons. There’s something funny about impending violence, but its realization almost invariably isn’t. Matt Groening ’s “Itchy and Scratchy” parody this type of humor, pushing the violence so hard as to be grotesque. I would hope that Pixar could take a lesson from him.
There are many different ways Pixar could have finished the story in Up, all of them skirting the intense violence that mars the end of this film. Muntz could have been a crackpot…you would be too if you were lost in the jungle for sixty years…who messes up Carl’s chance to get home. Muntz could have died, leaving Carl a clue. Muntz could have discovered a fountain of youth, and won’t go home. I just have to disagree with the homicidal maniac angle in a film marketed towards children.
And make no mistake: this film, which my seven year old described as “sad and scary”, seems to be marketed directly at her age group.
If you have younger children, wait for it to come out on DVD and preview it before you let them see it. Decide for yourself if the violence in this film is acceptable for young children. But don’t take them to see it on the big screen!
