Within 5 minutes this movie had me blubbering like a baby.  Literally.  It is the saddest start to a movie I have ever seen.  Normally there’s a sad part sometime in the middle or towards the end of the movie… like when Buzz finds out he’s really just a toy, or Sully and Mike get banished after Randall captures Boo, or even when McQueen gets yanked out of Radiator Springs by his sponsor. 

Not Up.

Up gut punches you from the beginning by starting off during old man Frederickson‘s childhood, where he meets the love of his life when he was like 6, they get married, move into a home they had played in, fix it up, plan for a baby, discover they can’t have babies, live life dreaming of a trip to South America which he promises they’ll go on, constantly have to use the money for other things, and then when Frederickson finally buys the tickets to Venezuela at his old age… his wife dies.

She dies before he can fulfill his life long promise of adventure.

Then, to make this movie worse… after a bulldozer knocks off his mailbox… he hits a construction worker with a tennis ball laden walker, gets dragged into court, and is declared ala Miracle On 42nd Street as a public menace!

Are you crying yet?  No?

Well let’s throw in Russell, the Wood Explorer who is trying to get the last badge so he can become a Senior Wood Explorer so that his absent father will come to the ceremony.  Sad yet?  If you aren’t ready to jump out a window after that, you’re obviously a cold hearted bastard.  As for the ending… yeah… still not happy.  I still had tears rolling through the credits that are supposed to be happy but could not pull me out of the take my own life-itude I was in.

Backpacking Dad has an interesting description of how to watch Up.  So I thought about it… and no… still does not make it any better.  If anything… it makes it worse.

I would highly suggest that, unless you are eternally happy with nothing but joy in your life, avoid this movie at all costs.  For what its worth though… The Wolves liked it.

If in fact you do not heed my warning… I then suggest that you see it in a theater close to Cheesecake Factory.  How else would you be able to avoid throwing yourself out of the window other than making sure you don’t fit through the window.

Up is false advertising.

Seriously.