Disney Pixar's "UP" Not Recommended for Preschoolers
The movie starts out with a touching back story of a little boy (Carl) and girl (Ellie) dreaming of great adventures that they are going to take together followed by a touching montage of their love...and loss. This part brought a tear to my eye. Skip to present day where Carl is holding out on selling his house to developers and in an effort to escape a court-ordered retirement home, he takes flight in his house with the aid of millions of balloons...and a stow-away scout intent on getting his "Help the Elderly" badge.
This is about as far as my daughter got before it started to upset her. From this point on it was nothing but thunderstorms, near-falls, house fires, vicious dogs and evil explorers. Most children's movies have one or two intense scenes necessary to the story, such as Nemo getting caught by the diver, or Wall-E getting zapped by Auto Pilot, but "UP" seems overly stuffed with drama that was way too intense for my four-year-old. She, and another little boy a few rows back, spent the last half of the movie cringing in her seat, near tears and I felt like Mother of the Year. The only reason that we stayed is that I wanted to show her that all would be fine in the end.
All was fine in the end, but the scary-intense parts far out-weighed the funny parts. I spent the majority of the movie hunched over my daughter's seat assuring her that the characters wouldn't fall out of the floating house, that the mean dogs wouldn't hurt the nice dog, Doug, (one of the only bright spots in the movie), that the evil explorer and his blimp wouldn't hurt the old man and the little boy and the bird would be fine.
My advice to parents is to wait until this one comes out on DVD if your kids are currently under five, maybe even six. I had heard nothing about the intensity of this movie, which is what prompted me to write this review. Heed the PG rating! In this case, you can't see "Disney-Pixar" and assume that it's all-kid-friendly. Instead of a happy first theater experience, I am only hoping now that this movie won't come back to bite me at bedtime.
Published by Valerie Oz
After a 6-year run at the "career thing," I have been at home with our daughter for almost 4 years now. I have to say that this job is harder, and a thousand-times more rewarding. And now there is another... View profile
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- While a great movie for adults and older children, UP is not for the preschool set.
- Very intense for most of the last half of the movie.
- SPOILER ALERT-I will describe most of the movie, but not enough to ruin it.
5 Comments
Post a CommentMy son is three years old, he loves this movie so much he quoats scenes and laughs at the funny parts and says oh no at the scenes with the dogs and says "no-no dogs" did I mention he is three? the movie toy story has some pretty scary scenes and foul language woody tells buzz to "shut up" and calls him an "idiot" do people really go around picking things from every movie and condemning it?
I wish I had read your article earlier, this is not a movie for small children. My five year old was almost in tears and spent the second half of the movie on my lap burying her head when the dogs came out.
It is, however, a fabulous film. Oscar material.
I was very surprised when there was only about 15 other kids there...after seeing it I know why. Parent's Magazine even recommended it for "all ages," (May issue) so I didn't think anything of the PG rating (I knew there was an implied death scene and figured that was why). I don't want to take any money out of Pixar's pocket, but there should be a warning for preschoolers.
Thanks! I almost took my son to see this on his 4th birthday, but I'm going to take him to see Earth instead now.
Excellent! Good advice.