Up Is a Rip-Roaring Adventure That Makes You Appreciate Normalcy

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."

I Won't Call Foul on Ferrell in Elf

Lately, I've been deluged with advertisements in which a dopey basketball player with big hair played by Will Ferrell promotes the movie Semi-Pro. Although Ferrell was my favorite Saturday Night Live cast member during his time on the show, largely because of his hilarious impersonations of such venerable figures as George W. Bush, Alex Trebek and James Lipton, I've generally found his films to be crude and stupid. However, there has been one notable exception to that trend.

Elf stars Ferrell as Buddy, the tallest elf in Santa's workshop. He lives in a world built for people half his size and smaller. Though he's bursting with Christmas cheer, always wearing an exuberant grin as he prances about in his green suit and yellow tights, physically, he just doesn't fit in, and there's a very good reason for that. Buddy is not an elf.

No, he's a regular old human who stowed away in Santa's (Ed Asner) pack as an infant and wound up at the North Pole, a fish out of water but still presumably much happier than he would have been at the orphanage he left. Though he loves his frosty home and especially the elf who raised him (Bob Newhart), when he gets the shocking truth about his past, Buddy is determined to go to the big city and meet his father (James Caan). But the naive young man with the emotional maturity of a five-year-old isn't prepared for what lies ahead...

Ferrell completely throws himself into his performance, making Buddy funny without being obnoxious, sweet without being saccharine. Yes, he's over-the-top, but having seen what Ferrell is capable of, I'd say he exercised admirable restraint. While Buddy was physically out of place at the North Pole, he is mentally out of place in New York City, impossibly bright-eyed and naive like Giselle in Disney's Enchanted.

Like Giselle, he finds himself falling for a jaded New Yorker. In this case, it's department store elf Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), who isn't too full of the Christmas spirit. Their romance unfolds gradually, prodded along by Buddy's encouragement for her to sing, an activity she doesn't want to admit she loves. Speaking of singing, the movie got a nice little squeal out of me with an off-hand reference to Simon and Garfunkel; if you love Paul and Artie as much as I do, keep an ear out!

While I don't expect much out of Semi-Pro, Elf is a thoroughly enjoyable movie, a gently funny showcase of all the best Ferrell has to offer, and I hope he has a film or two along those family-friendly lines in his future.

Happy When it was Over

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is one of the greatest animated movies of all time. "Happily Ever After," the sequel that came more than half a century later, is one of the worst. Picking up where the last movie left off, this movie begins with Snow White picking flowers with her Prince on the way to invite the Seven Dwarfs to their wedding. In the middle of this idyllic scene, the prince is snatched away by a dragon, who is a transformation of the wicked queen's brother. Determined to avenge his sister's death, he carries the prince off and begins to plan his capture of Snow White.

Meanwhile, a distraught Snow White makes her way to the home of the Seven Dwarfs, only to find that they have left. In their place are their female cousins, the Seven Dwarfelles. Each has been given a special gift by Mother Nature, but they bicker so much that they end up doing more harm than good with their powers. They soon agree to join Snow White on her quest to rescue her beloved, hampered by Mother Nature's threatened revocation of the Dwarfelles' powers, an ornery owl and his timid bat sidekick determined to deliver the women to the enemy, and a mysterious creature lurking in the shadows.

Famous voices and a classic story do not bail this movie out. It sinks where the original soared. Of course, this is not Disney. Everyone familiar with the Disney movie is sure to be annoyed by the obvious differences in the characters -- mainly in Snow White. If this is your first experience with Snow White, maybe you won't care so much. An extremely obnoxious villain and a heroine with a voice like nails on a chalkboard do not help this movie. Neither do the stilted dialogue and largely forgettable songs.

There are a few bright spots in this movie: the owl (played by Ed Asner) and the bat provide some genuine comic relief, and the magic mirror is mildly entertaining. Unfortunately, that's about it. Another warning: For some inexplicable reason, toddlers seem to love this movie. If you buy it, they will want to watch it over and over and over until they finally tire of it...at which point you will be on the verge of kicking a hole in the tv. All in all, this movie is a disastrous attempt to capitalize on a classic story. If you want classic, stick with the original.