Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin;’ flatscreen.
When Pixar puts out a dud of a film, like Cars 2, it’s both understandable and incredibly frustrating. On the one hand, not everyone hits a home run every time. On the other hand, expectations are so high for Pixar films. Over and over again, they seem to do the impossible. Up shouldn’t work. This is a movie made for kids and the main character is in his 70s and uses a quad cane. And yet it works because Pixar is smart enough to stick to what works for them: they write good stories that touch on something real and human in everyone. Up defies expectations because it lives up to what we expect from Pixar.
The reason their films work is because they avoid stereotypes as much as possible. Oh, they’ll play with them now and then. Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) is very much the stereotype of an old curmudgeon. His putative sidekick, Russell (Jordan Nagai), however, is not what we’ve come to expect. Jordan is chubby, excitable, earnest, and Asian. But he’s a kid before he’s any of those things, which makes him completely believable. He’s a real kid, not an Asian stereotype forced into a movie.
