I recently saw the movie Up. From what I hear, it’s been tremendously popular. My opinion of it was not quite unilaterally favorable—but I did like it.
The things I didn’t like were that the plot was a little crazy, and the true nature of Charles Muntz, Ellie’s lifelong hero, was disappointing…but I don’t want to give anything away.
What I did like was pretty much everything else: the animation, especially the facial expressions and body movements; the characters’ personalities; the lines. But my favorite thing was how the animals “talked”…but didn’t really.
Stop reading here if you don’t want it spoiled for you!
Now, I may be in small company with this opinion, but I don’t like movies in which animals talk. It just isn’t believable. Animals communicating with each other, okay. But animals cannot talk. They don’t have the part of the brain where the speech center is located. They don’t have the right shape mouth or facial muscles. They don’t have the intelligence to formulate complex thoughts.
But!
This is where Up solved the problem in a way that works for me. Being an animal lover, I know that animals think, and their thoughts are usually related to things such as food, needs for exercise or going to the bathroom, comfort or discomfort, and their feelings for their humans. So, in this movie, those thoughts are translated, by means of an electronic collar, into speech understandable by humans. So for example, a dog can certainly think (or feel, depending on how you look at it) “I love you” to its master. If technology were able to translate those thoughts/feelings into human speech, a dog could indeed talk. So simple in theory!
As far as movie magic goes, it worked for me.