All in all, there are worse sights than an eager Wilderness Ranger when you open your front door.
(Disney) Starring the voices of Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer, Delroy Lindo, John Ratzenberger, Bob Peterson, Jerome Ranft, David Kaye, Elie Docter, Jeremy Leary, Mickie McGowan, Danny Mann. Directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson.
Some people wait their entire lives for the adventure of a lifetime, only to see it pass us by. The truth is, the only reason not to go out and grab our dreams by the throat is our fear of leaving our familiar existence.
Young Carl Fredricksen (Leary) is a little shy but not about his favorite subject – adventurer Charles Muntz (Plummer). With a dirigible luxuriously outfitted for his family of dogs, Muntz goes to locations all over the globe to find strange and exotic creatures for study, and the newsreels of the time eat it all up. After a trip to South America and a particularly remote location called Paradise Falls – a land lost to time – Muntz returns with a skeleton of a large bird. Experts, however, decry the skeleton as fake. Disgraced and stripped of his membership in professional societies and stung by the assaults on his character, he takes off in his airship for Venezuela, vowing not to return until he has a live specimen to vindicate his name. He is not seen again.
Despite his hero’s fall from grace, Carl is not deterred in his worship. He meets young Ellie (Docter) who shares his obsession. She has even commandeered an abandoned house to serve as her personal airship. As talkative and outgoing as Carl is shy and timid, Ellie and Carl take to each other like cats to milk.
They grow up and marry. Now a man, Carl (Asner) becomes a balloon vendor at a zoological park where Ellie works as a docent. He buys her the old abandoned house where they played as children and work hard to make it their dream home. They go on picnics and watch the clouds drift by, but their dream is the same; one day to build a home on remote Paradise Falls.
They save their pennies for the trip, but life gets in the way. They continually have to borrow from their trip fund for everyday crises; auto repairs, home repairs, medical repairs. They have a good life, but not without its share of heartache. At last, there comes a day when Ellie isn’t able to make the climb up the hill to their favorite picnic spot. Faithful Carl stays with her in the hospital, but she knows where this is leading. She hands Carl her adventure scrapbook, meaning for him to read it. Not long after that, he must face life alone without her.
He opens her scrapbook regularly, but is unable to get past the section that reads “Stuff I’m Going to Do” believing that he failed to give her the adventures she dreamed of, knowing those pages would be blank. He is lost, cantankerous and alone, walking with one of those canes with four tennis balls on them. When Russell (Nagai), an overweight Asian-American Wilderness Explorer comes to his door asking him if he can aid Carl in any way (so he can get the final merit badge to become a Senior Explorer), Carl literally sends him on a snipe hunt. The good-natured Russell is only too happy to help.
Around their home developers are putting together one of those godawful mixed use apartment buildings with shopping and casual dining on the first floor. His home stands in their way, and they are constantly pressuring him to sell which he adamantly refuses to do, despite the best efforts of their construction foreman (Ratzenberger). When a construction worker backs into his mailbox which is marked by Ellie’s handprint, Carl loses it.
This gives the faceless developers the opening they need. Carl is taken to court where he is judged a menace to society. He is ordered sent to a retirement facility, which would allow the developers to raze his home to the ground.
Carl is faced with a decision. He can accept his fate and give up on life, or he can take the opportunity to finally become the explorer he and Ellie always wanted to be. With the ingenuity of a born balloonist, he ties thousands upon thousands of balloons to his home, fashions an ingenious steering system through his weather vane and heads up.
Flying over the city, he feels liberated for the first time since Ellie left. He settles into his favorite easy chair to enjoy his flight when there is, oddly, a knock at the door. When he opens it, he is startled to discover Russell, who had been chasing the Snipe (which he admits looked oddly like a field mouse) under the porch at the time of lift off. Russell had scrambled onto the porch and now was a reluctant stowaway. Carl, knowing that it is too dangerous to leave him exposed on the porch, invites him in.
After a storm tosses them about, they at last arrive on the plateau of Paradise Falls, but on the wrong side. They don’t have a great deal of flight capability because the helium is slowly leaking from the balloons. Carl means to drag the house to the opposite side of the plateau to at last retire to the place he and Ellie meant to be.
Before he can do that, he must contend with talking dogs, a rather persistent chocolate-eating bird and an embittered and obsessive Charles Muntz. He must also weigh doing the right thing against completing his dream, but what if doing the right thing would mean betraying the person who has meant everything to him his entire life?
This is being hailed as Pixar’s finest creation to date, and not without justification. First of all, there’s the look of the film. It is brightly colorful, virtually eye-popping in every detail. The animation is stylized, yes but with an amazing and rich detail that will make repeated viewings a pleasure.
Then there’s the tone. Director Pete Docter – who previously helmed Monsters, Inc and co-wrote WALL-E – has crafted Carl Fredricksen’s life with loving care. The opening sequence which essentially sets the table is a stunning bit of filmmaking. Poignant and heartbreaking in spots, it also has some laugh-out-loud funny moments. In many ways, Carl Fredricksen is the most complete character in terms of personality that Pixar has ever created. Fredricksen has a great big heart, but that heart has been broken. He is cantankerous, short-tempered and a bit selfish. He is far from perfect, but when the chips are down he comes through.
It is to Docter and Pixar’s credit that they create an action hero who is old and not in the best of shape. In fact, only Muntz is the kind of fit hero we are used to seeing in adventure movies. Russell is certainly out of shape and Dug (Ranft), the likable talking dog that befriends Carl and Russell, is more of a mutt than the sleek, menacing dogs that Muntz uses as his army.
This was the first animated film to open the Cannes Film Festival, an honor normally reserved for French live-action films, and an honor richly deserved. There is no doubt in my mind that this film is deserving of an Oscar nomination for Best Picture; whether or not that happens is anybody’s guess, but it certainly is a better movie than Finding Nemo and to my mind, Beauty and the Beast which did get the nomination in that category, the only animated feature thus honored to date.
Poignant without being sentimental and never talking down to its audience (which may blow some of the more heart-rending scenes right by younger viewers), this is another triumph for Pixar. Yes, the kids will love the bright colors, the action and the strange creatures of Paradise Falls, but their parents will appreciate the well-rounded characters, the thoughtful story and the uplifting message that we are never too old to begin an adventure. Up is one of the best movies you will see this year.
WHY RENT THIS: Simply put one of the best movies of the year. Poignant in places and funny in others, it presents a well-rounded and believable character in Carl Fredricksen. The colors are eye-popping; it’s a gorgeous movie to look at.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Some of the more heart-wrenching moments may go over the head of younger children, who may get restless in places.
FAMILY VALUES: Suitable for all but the very youngest of children.
TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The Pizza Planet truck from Toy Story can be seen in the streets while Carl’s house is rising, and also in the final scene in the parking lot.
NOTABLE DVD FEATURES: The Blu-Ray contains a new Dug animated feature, as well as footage from the filmmakers trip to Venezuela, which would inspire the Paradise Falls location in the movie.
FINAL RATING: 9/10
TOMORROW: The Ugly Truth
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