Up

Film Reviews • Tuesday November 17th, 2009 • 12:01 pm

Pixar is the most consistent filmmaking studio in the movie business today. Churning out one terrific animated film after another, they are making movies that not only blow the animated competition out of the water, but some of their films are able to stand up next to “real” films as well. Part of Pixar’s genius lies in the joy they take in choosing unlikely heroes for their films. They’ve introduced us to toys, bugs, monsters, fish, super heroes, cars, rats, and robots and miraculously we’ve cared about them all. For their tenth film, they select what is perhaps their most unexpected hero to date, an ornery, old widower named Carl Fredricksen.

We first meet Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) as a child in a movie house in the 1940s, and I can think of no better place for the adventure depicted in Up to begin. On the silver screen, Carl sees his hero, the explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), and wants to venture to faraway lands just like Muntz, in the pursuit of adventure. Carl soon meets a young girl, Ellie, who shares his passion for Muntz and adventure-seeking in exotic lands. Carl is quickly smitten with Ellie and what follows on screen is one of the purest, most touching segments in recent cinema. We see the decades that span Carl and Ellie’s life from marriage until they are parted by death in a wordless montage that captures the highs and lows, the exciting and the boring, and the pure joy that is possible in marital life. It truly is the highlight of Up.

Carl, now a widower, with nowhere to go and no one at home, decides to set out on the adventure of a lifetime in a very unusual method which creates one of the most beautiful images to appear on movie screens this year: a colorful bouquet of thousands of helium balloons tied to Carl’s beloved house, which is all that remains of his life with Ellie. Carl’s accidental companion for this adventure to South America is Russell, an Asian-American Wilderness Explorer (think boy scout). They meet some strange, wonderful, and awful characters on their journey and enjoy quite a bit of adventure amidst some, at times, sharp tonal shifts in the film’s second half. Up not only proves that “adventure is out there,” but it reveals that the best adventures in life remain the relationships we have with others.

One of the best aspects of Up is the respect it has for its audience. All of Pixar’s films have been notable in that they are enjoyed by both kids and their parents (good news for parents who’ve been forced to sit through mindless animated features for years). However, Up may be the first Pixar film that can almost be appreciated more by adults than kids. That’s not to say that kids won’t enjoy it, there are still plenty of fun characters, like Dug the Dog, and silly sequences to keep the kids engaged. The film deals with some weighty issues like aging, infertility, the dissolution of families, and death. But in a testament to the delicate hands of directors, Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, and the entire Pixar team, each issue is handled delicately.

Up is a moving film about marriage, adventure, and real love, and its depiction of a happy marriage may be better than any recent movie that comes to mind. This film will bring hearty laughter and tears; it entertains but it also has some real weight and depth. It doesn’t sacrifice the enjoyment of its viewers for a message, nor does it rely on mindless chase sequences to the neglect of anything of substance. If there were more movies like Up, movie-going would be a much more satisfying experience. After 10 films, this is what we’ve come to expect from Pixar. Up is a treasure, a moving piece of cinema, a masterstroke, or to put it simply, it’s just another Pixar movie.