Well, I'm working on 'booting up my DVD,' so no comments on the commentary yet, but I have to say that I really did not enjoy this movie. Of course, I didn't like Monsters, Inc. either, and you guys turned me around.

I have to agree, this movie is not perfect, how ever if this was made by Dreamworks, I would be astounded and recommend this to everybody I meet in the street. As it is Pixar, yes it is amazing, But not a new chapter of life, like every film they have made so far.

It would be like Jesus springing into existence and doing street magic, sawing people in half with out the use of a saw. Yeah its good compared to everybody else, but your old work was better. (PS The events depicted in that comparison are fictitious. Any similarity to Judeo-Christian Mythology is merely coincidental. )

How ever I think the real reason is that UP is 2 movies mashed together. The moment he lands The second film starts. Although the second film is good, its pulling the first down. The first film is a Journey Film about getting to the location he and his wife have dreamed about all their lives. Call it a Pixar road trip. The second is a An explorer in a strange land and a small child who tagged along by accident.

Just imagine what the first film could have been. You've seen Zathura, You know a film based mainly inside a single house is more than possible. Imagine Pixar doing Zathura. Imagine Up where the house is slightly larger, traveling through the clouds and bumping into something like, a fleet of Zeppelins. A world of people living above us in the skies. Maybe between the world wars they realized another was coming took to the skies to abandon the rest of us.

Ok this is turning into Wall-e A little bit. But My point still stands, The journey should have been the film not the running around with a house strapped to his waist.

As I said on the TFN boards, definitely not one of my favorite (Although like you guys said, if it was left to the first 20, it would have been magical, but alas). As soon as Dug enters it just turns into this weird Dreamworksy "romp" through the jungle. Although I had never really thought about the second bit of magic element, it does totally make sense to me now. It started to lose me right after Dug was introduced. And then even more so after the other Dogs.
(And as much as I do find Alpha's squeaky voice hilarious, at the same time it really feels like the cheap shot.) And then as soon as we get Dogs serving dinner and flying planes and all of a sudden Pixar is exceedingly politically correct. Just nothing about it felt Pixar, you know?

And I gotta ask am I seriously the only person on the planet that doesn't HATE CARS??!?!!? Every where I turn I see people totally hating on Cars and I just don't get it. I would BEG you guys to do that one next, just so I can understand what the hell everyone's problem with it is. I mean it's not like I'm a huge fan of cars in general (in fact quite the opposite. I know absolutely jack about anything about cars.)

Maybe it's just one of those Teague and Phantom Menace things....

(Oh and Bob Peterson (writer/story guy) was the voice of Roz, Mr. Ray and Dug. And Brad Bird was Edna. Plus there are like 50 million other in house voices scattered everywhere (The Chicken Fish in Nemo for one (Oh my gossh, Nemos schwimming out to shea!!) yah that one.

And I've never seen Doc Hollywood, so that probably doesn't help. But is that really just it? (I mean I can definitely understand it, if it is. It just seems that most people I try to talk to about Cars, it seems alot deeper than just that. But they usually don't wanna talk about it

I haven't seen it, but I think Dorkman has. I really enjoyed the short, though.

Alright, alright, fair enough. But I mean these guys are experienced actors, and in the movie they sound exactly like some sesame street actors or somethin. I know hey aren't people have trained to do voice acting, but they are still actors and they should have been better than they were is all I'm saying.

Obviously, yes, they should have gotten experienced voice actors, I'm not debating that. But for who they had, the performances seemed remarkably disproportionate to skill.

Alright, perhaps skill was not quite the word i was looking for. Lets try experience.

While I am not saying that these guys should have been able to give say a Billy West level of performance (since folks around here seem to like using him as an example), all I'm saying is that over the period of an actors life they learn to develop a certain amount of ability when giving a performance to not sound like Joe blow from your local kids television programing. (And I would say that granted the voice is not nearly as important when you are doing film but it still requires a certain amount of respect to be given. It takes both.)

So all I am saying is that given the amount of experience these actors have had, their performances should not have been NEARLY this bad. (Yes I am going to pull the Happy Feet card here. So we know Elijah wood can give at least a semi decent performance behind a mic. But for some reason it didn't show up in 9.)

I'll wait until you actually see the thing to discuss further.

"Circles for balloons, angles for house = Elli giving him wings..."

Holy shit.

To be fair, the skill sets separating a voice actor from a "regular" actor are not completely or exclusively different. The fundamental principles of acting truthfully under imaginary circumstances are the same, you're just putting more emphasis on different tools (your voice as opposed to your body). Even then, some of the tools are the same. The "regular" actor will still train his voice, just not as much or in a particular way as a voice actor, for obvious reasons.

And, it should be pointed out, many actors go back and forth between both with differing amounts of regularity, including Billy West.

With all due respect to Mr. West, I think the difference in quality has less to do with training and different skill sets (though that is part of it) and more to do with the fact that in cases like some Dreamworks pictures, they're out to do the biggest business on opening weekend, not finding the best people and talent to tell the story they want to tell, which is the same problem behind all lazy studio storytelling in Hollywood. Thus, you end up getting Will Smith coming in for an easy paycheck, as opposed to Tom Hanks delivering a solid performance.

Good commentary, guys.

The early Pixar movie extras showed what I think is the Pixar secret sauce: the writers pitch ideas to each other over time (like years) in sessions led by the director, and what everyone agrees works and feels right is what stays. I think Dreamworks makes their animated movies more like regular movies: a couple of guys put a screenplay together, a few other people give them notes, and they go thru a few drafts until everyone is too tired to argue anymore. They don't collaborate as a team.

I liked Cars (I'm a car guy), but it is definitely the most thematically confused Pixar story. It's not just Doc Hollywood (city boy falls in love with the country and learns to slow down). It's also the archetypal apprentice story (kid with potential learns the secret to success from an old master--the first part of the monomyth). So the ending is like, "Now he has all the tricks he needs to win! Wax on, wax off, Daniel-san! But wait! There's more to life than winning! Chuck it all and live the quiet life, Doc Hollywood!"

Pretty much hated Shrek. Fiona was creepy and annoying. The Matrix/Robin Hood parody stuff was agony. The pop music was grating. The Shrek/Donkey relationship was all I cared about.