Review: Up (2009)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                                UP
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Certainly UP is one of Pixar's best
     films to date.  The reason is not that it has
     some of their best animation, though that
     arguably is true.  But their story values are
     may be improving faster than their animation.
     UP is a story with genuine pathos on themes of
     loss and of unfulfilled dreams.  All this mixes
     with an adventure story with a little bit of
     action.  Kids will love this film, but some of
     the notes of this film will definitely resonate
     with adults.  A bittersweet prolog really works
     to make this film a much better story.  Rating:
     high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10

Pixar is pushing the art of animation beyond all expectations.
Early on in UP we see a boy carrying a balloon.  Now in our world
some balloons when inflated are opaque and some made more cheaply
are translucent.  Pixar would have been excused if they had taken
the easy route and made the boy's balloon opaque.  That would be an
easier effect to create.  But this is a cheap balloon and we see
the background faintly through the balloon.  That is just doing
things the hard way just to show the audience that the visual
images are better than they need to be.  The animators were going
to extra effort just to show their virtuosity at creating visuals.
But their plotting and storytelling is more affecting than it has
been in any previous major animated film that comes to mind.  Their
secret weapon is a prolog.  The main character is Carl Fredricksen,
a man probably in his late seventies.  The prolog shows him as
young boy enthralled by a world-famous explorer, Charles Muntz.
Carl finds a girl as fascinated by adventure as Carl is.  They
become friends, then a couple, then husband and wife, then an old
husband and wife, then she passes away and leaves him lonely.
That's right, a character the viewer likes dies in the prolog.
Right now I can think of only four so likeable characters killed
off in previous Disney films and three are canines.  It is a risk
to kill off someone the viewer likes, but it gives the entire film
resonance.  When Carl mourns his wife, the audience does also.  And
the film needs this resonance since somewhere in the back-story it
there it is about disappointment, loss, loneliness, and the choice
between values and dreams.  Not that this is a grim story, but it
is a surprisingly honest and moving one.

Carl Fredricksen (voiced by the wonderful Ed Asner) is an old
curmudgeon and widower who lives in the same house he lived in with
his beloved wife.  The two had always dreamed of the adventure of
going to Venezuela and seeing Paradise Falls on a certain mystical
plateau that was visited by the celebrated explorer Charles Muntz
(apparently the same plateau that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to
write THE LOST WORLD).  Now Carl's house is to be bulldozed to make
way for some big building, and Carl will be neatly filed in a rest
home.  But he has another plan.  He will float his house high in
the sky using several hundred helium balloons.  He will harness the
winds and fly his house to the mystical plateau.  He is flying
through the solitude of the sky when there is a knock at the door.
It seems he is not as alone as he thought.  A boy Wilderness
Explorer (think Boy Scout) named Russell (Jordan Nagai) has been
taken with the house.  Begrudgingly Carl takes the boy in and
together they fly to the plateau.  The plateau turns out to be a
sort of magical place.  It has giant birds like living
phorusrhacidae.  Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) still rules
the plateau and seems very active and spry.  Carl is old enough to
need a cane with a stand, and Muntz must be at least twenty-five
years older, but somehow he is not.  Most delightful are the Muntz
dogs who have been fitted with collars that allow them to talk,
though they still think like dogs.  But Carl and Muntz are headed
for a clash of values.

Pixar has gone past the point where they made animated films that
happened to be good stories.  Now they are making good stories that
happen to be animated.  I rate UP a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale
or 8/10.

As good as the story is there are still some bad plot holes that
should be noted.  Perhaps the magic of the plateau is keeping Muntz
 from getting very old, but Carl should have at least observed that
it was odd that a man who was out exploring the world when Carl was
a young boy is still alive and spry on the plateau.  Also a
scrapbook is important to the plot, but it is not until the end of
the film that Carl does something with this book that he more
likely would have done years earlier.

A short animated film, "Partly Cloudy", is packaged with UP.  The
idea seems to be that storks get the babies they deliver from
clouds.  Some babies are easier to handle than others.  The
animation is fine, but the story is just not very interesting.
"Presto", the film that came packaged with WALL-E, was considerably
better.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/>

What others are saying: <http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/up/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper