A couple of years ago, I saw a piece on the evening news about a man who
had traveled nearly 200 miles on a lawn chair with dozens of balloons
tied to it. Though he didn't quite reach his destination before touching
down again, the kid in me who's always wanted to take to the skies like
Superman thought this seemed like an excellent notion. About a year
after that, I began to hear about Up, featuring an old man who
has the same basic idea - only this time, he takes his whole house
along, intending to permanently relocate to Paradise Falls, the South
American wonder where he had long ago promised to bring the love of his
life. At the time, I didn't know anything about destination or
motivation. I just thought, "What a way to travel!"
Up is
the latest in a steady line of Pixar movies, each of which has
delighted audiences with cutting-edge animation technology and warm,
funny, clever stories to back it up. I saw it a little later than I
intended - catching it at the dollar theater, which meant I didn't get
the 3-D experience - but I'm just satisfied to have seen it on the big
screen. It's a cinematic marvel that deserves the larger-than-life
treatment.
Before the feature itself is a delightful appetizer in the form of the short film Partly Cloudy.
In our theater, there was no title sequence, so at first I thought we
were seeing a preview, and when I saw the sky littered with storks
collecting and delivering little bundles of joy, I thought that Lambert the Sheepish Lion,
one of my all-time favorite Disney shorts, might be getting the
full-length treatment. Once I realized that this was a film in itself,
however, I settled back to enjoy the wordless tale of a battered stork
assigned to a stormy cloud that creates an array of dangerous youngsters
for conveyance to Earth. While other storks report to puffy white
clouds producing cuddly kittens and perky puppies, this unlucky bird
gets stuck with crocodiles, porcupines and rams. The cloud and the stork
seem to share a pleasant rapport, but how long can the stalwart stork
withstand such abuse of life and limb? It's an endearing short whose
aerial setting and theme of friendship flourishing amidst challenges
make it an ideal opener for this particular film.
In the first previews I saw for Up, only one character was revealed: Carl Fredricksen, a crusty curmudgeon voiced by Ed Asner.
We meet him moments into the movie, but not as an old man; instead,
he's a wide-eyed lad in a movie theater, thrilling to the newsreel
detailing the adventures of his hero, Charles Muntz. He's a quiet lad
who is overwhelmed when he wanders into the playhouse of his neighbor
Ellie (Elie Docter, daughter of co-writer-director Pete Docter). She is
equally smitten with Muntz, despite the fact that the scientific
community has now dismissed him as a fraud, and she can talk timid Carl
into the ground. She prattles on with vim and vigor, but it isn't until
the whirlwind conclusion of the first day of their friendship that Carl
utters a verbal response to his new playmate.
What follows is a
wordless montage chronicling Carl and Ellie's life together. It doesn't
last as long as the majestic nearly-silent first section of WALL-E,
but it manages to be just as powerful, depicting all the joys and
disappointments a lifetime of love can bring. By the time we get to the
scene from the previews of Carl slowly descending the stairs on a chair
lift, he's not just a grumpy old man. He's that same endearing little
boy, with years of experience behind him and several compelling reasons
not to greet the morning with a smile. First and foremost, he is now a
widower. Moreover, he feels he has failed Ellie because he never got her
to Paradise Falls. And one glance out his front door shows us that he
is a living anachronism, stubbornly clinging to his little technicolor
dream home while a determined developer knocks out all of the houses
around him.
If this were a different sort of movie - say, Herbie Rides Again,
which pits feisty widow Mrs. Steinmetz against seedy millionaire Alonzo
Hawk - that developer trying most diligently to get Carl into a nursing
home would be the Big Bad. But after Carl finds himself backed into a
corner, he abandons fight for flight. A former balloon vendor, he uses
his expertise to get him one step closer to that long-deferred dream.
It's an overnight job, and there's no time to air-proof his home, which
is full of breakable knick-knacks. But oh, what a glorious sight when
those hundreds of vibrant balloons lift him into the air and send him
soaring into the blue!
Carl's spur-of-the-moment decision has
huge implications. He intends to make for Paradise Falls, but he doesn't
really know how to get there or what to do with himself once he does.
One gets the idea that he intends to admire the landmark and then simply
sit around and wait to join his wife. But earnest, chubby young scout
Russell (Jordan Nagai) throws a wrench in his plans. Eager to earn his
Assisting the Elderly badge, he's been buzzing around Carl's doorstep,
and that's how he winds up an unintentional stowaway on his journey. His
presence is lucky for Carl, since it's GPS-toting Russell who steers
the house to South America after its owner is knocked out in a fierce
storm. But when he comes to, Carl has a lot more responsibility on his
hands than he'd bargained for, and no amount of spare change will be
enough to stick Russell on a bus that will land him back at home.
As Pixar movies go, Up
is fairly short on characters. John Ratzenberger makes his expected
appearance as one of a handful of characters who speak before Carl's
take-off; opportunities for a cameo in the wilds of South America would
have been limited to talking dogs, or rather dogs telepathically linked
to talking collars. They are foot soldiers in the personal army of one
mysterious man voiced by Christopher Plummer;
it is their job to attend to his comfort, ward off intruders and seek a
long-desired quarry. The most intimidating of these is a Doberman named
Alpha, the least a Golden Retriever named Dug, both voiced by
co-writer-director Bob Peterson. In fact, Dug doesn't fit in with his
cronies at all, and he adds to Carl's consternation when the chipper
pooch adopts him as his new master. Meanwhile, Russell has befriended a
brilliantly plumaged bird inclined to make strange noises. Three
tag-alongs are not much help in walking the house to the edge of
Paradise Falls before the helium holding it aloft leaks out, but when
each of his companions is imperiled, it's time for Carl to re-examine
his priorities.
Although Pixar's humans still look a little less
realistic than just about everything else the animators come up with, I
find square-headed Carl and pudgy Russell to be quite charming, while
the bird they befriend is dazzling. This is probably Pixar's most
colorful movie since Finding Nemo, and I especially love the way
the colored light seeping through the windows from the balloons reflects
off the surfaces inside the house, as though it were enclosed in
stained glass. It's not a very busy movie; the pace is fairly sedate,
though there are some exciting action sequences, including the most
unconventional swordfight I've ever seen.
The dogs provide a lot
of humor, with canine idiosyncrasies heightened by the often awkward
syntax of their devices, leading to sentences like "I so ever do want
the ball!" and "Why do I not have the surprised feeling?" Recurring
jokes involving squirrels, tennis balls, a malfunctioning collar and
references to Russell in his Wilderness Explorer uniform as a "small
mailman" give us plenty to laugh about, though Dug's instant loyalty to
Carl is at the heart of some of the film's most touching moments.
Carl's
most significant relationships in the movie, however, are with Ellie
and Russell. The Asian-American scout is a bundle of cheerful energy,
but it turns out that he and taciturn Carl have some important things in
common, and this new friendship may just be sufficient motivation for
Carl to see a life as still having new possibilities. Up is a
tale of adventure, but more than that, it's about the most important
ingredients in a life well-lived. While many of us would love to embark
upon a journey as extraordinary as the one Carl and Russell undertake,
the theme of the movie can best be summed up with the boy's quiet
reflection: "Sometimes, it's the boring stuff I remember the most."
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