I noticed that in almost all of the Up reviews that I read - almost none of them mentioned the fact that Russell was Asian American. (In fact, Roger Ebert wasn't even sure if he was! I wrote an e-mail confirming it with links to Angry Asian Man and interviews with the Pixar folks.) The omission was kind of odd, in my opinion.

Another thing that I noticed was that while all of the reviews mentioned that Peter Docter (the director) provided the voice of Dug (whom I looooooove :), not a one picked up on the fact that Russell is based on Pixar animator Pete Sohn, who directed the animated short that's shown before Up (he also provided the voice of Emile in Ratatouille), even though the directors mentioned this several times in various interviews. And we wonder why the traditional media is going the way of the dodo bird...

Thanks for writing this post! I was debating whether or not to write about it myself but wasn't sure if it I was the only one who noticed this. I did appreciate not only Russell but the other kids of color in the movie, like the Black girl who sees the balloons and the house fly by and the scout and his father at the end receiving a badge along with Russell.  

Also, a funny and apt observation from Maya Soetoro-Ng via Konrad on Facebook: Up is like Gran Torino for kids.

Asians don't want to be stereotyped in movies (HERRO accent, funny bowl hair cut, karate/martial arts) but then when Pixar makes an Asian kid totally white washed and American looking/sounding, THEN the Asian community is mad for not stating he's still Asian.  Well, talk about speaking out of both ends...  Perhaps every movie should indicate at the beginning how many characters of each race there are.  Today Warner Bros presents Gran Torino with 2 Whites, 4 Blacks, 3 Hispanic, 12 Asians, and 1 "Unknown".  Pbviously Roger Ebert and the national media in general is racist for not guessing/mentioning the boy character in Up is Asian.   After all, we roundeye only recognize you Oriental people when you are doing drop kicks and making chinky eye faces while saying "I Rove You".  Oh brother!!

 

Please this is lame.

I count several straw men in your argument. ebeh didn't claim that reviewers are being racist for not mentioning the kid is not Asian. In fact, the general tone of the post is positive in that the portrayal of the kid isn't stereotypical. However, it IS important that the Asianness of the character is mentioned. There aren't that many movies with Asian American characters in them. Indeed, books with Asian characters in them end up being played by white actors. The movie 21 was a good example of that. And in fact, movies with "negative" portrayals of Asian Americans have been welcomed as well even by the Asian American community. You're obviously not following some of the longer cultural threads that have been played out in the Asian American blogosphere or indeed when Asian Americans talk to one another. It's become less new to us that we're seeing Asian Americans in a film like "Up" but it's still new. I welcome ebeh's post in the spirit of what Asian Americans have been portrayed in the past. It's worth it to mention the appearance of Asian Americans in any media simply because we're still very underrepresented in American film and TV.

Totally wrong on this one, sorry.  Good movie.