Well, I have seen "Up," and I was going to go to the trouble of writing a point-by-point refutation of this review, but really, why bother? It's not going to change anything. If Salon hasn't fired Stephanie Zacherek before now, they're not going to.

I'm sure Ms. Zacherek is a lovely person to chat or have a drink with -- I can only assume this is part of the reason she keeps her job, since, in my experience, it's the reason most incompetent people keep their jobs -- but as a critic she's a disgrace. She does nothing but babble intentionally contrarian, faux-profound nonsense in a futile if endless quest to be seen as the second coming of her idol, Pauline Kael. The thing is, while I violently disagreed with almost every opinion Ms. Kael expressed, I loved her writing, which was stylistically original and unhampered, bless her heart, by any sense of obligation to anyone else's point-of-view. Fine, fair enough. At least her opinions were clearly expressed and made sense on the terms of their own internal logic.

Ms. Zacherek, on the other hand, has somehow made a Salon career out of writing either impenetrable gobbledygook (I used that word a while back in another comment about her, but I have to use it again because it's just so goddamned apt) or self-satisfied blather. She is interested in nothing so much as seeming superior to the films she writes about. It would be banal if it weren't so blatant and, in a case like this, offensively dense.

I mean, "cold"? "Up" feels "cold"? Really, Stephanie? The first ten minutes, for example, that wordless kinetoscope of moments that make up a normal life of joys and sorrows -- like a young and in-love couple painting a room for an expected baby, followed by the wordless grief in a doctor's office of the woman who's just learned she's lost the baby and the pained husband unable to change it or comfort her -- really? That strikes you as overly sentimental? You feel nothing at that? You find that "cold"?

I just want to make sure I'm getting this straight. You're going to faint-praise-damn an earnest little fable without a single overtly commercial choice in it, from the only major development studio working in American film today that hasn't sold its soul to focus groups and reboots of Saturday morning cartoon premises and toy products? You're going to slam these people because, to paraphrase your words, they're too good at what they do? THAT'S your criticism?

Well, fine. Here's mine, from someone whose opinion is just as educated and as valid as yours, if not more: You're pathetic. You're a fraud. You're a wannabe masquerading as an intellectual, and the crap you write gives decent critics like Pauline Kael a bad name. Go find a teaching job at a little junior college in the Central Valley somewhere; you've got no business being paid by a decent publication like Salon for writing the way you do. Quit now and clear out some space for someone who still has room in their heart to love movies for what they are.

Until you do, this is the last review of yours I'm reading. I have better ways to spend my time. Hey, maybe I'll go see "Up" again, just to piss you off.