There are a lot of things to like about Up, the new animated film from Pixar Animation Studios, not the least of which is how well developed the characters and storyline are. Beginning with Toy Story in 1995, its sequel Toy Story 2, four years later, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and last summer’s box office sensation WALL-E, Pixar has spurned making just fluff animated films, that are simply fun, but lack depth, and instead, as is the case with the studio’s film Up, there is a theme, a plot and something to be learned and / or savored. As Up unfolds, we fall in love with characters such as the curmudgeon Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner), the good hearted and persistent boy Russell (Jordan Nagai), Carl’s childhood sweetheart Ellie (Elie Docter). We learn to despise the evil Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), and we are often bewildered by a female bird named Kevin, and an unlikely canine hero named Dug (Bob Peterson).
The film opens, first with a vintage newsreel which introduces us to the shamed and dastardly explorer Charles Muntz, before the scene shifts to a rickety old house with the words Spirit of Adventure scrawled across it, perhaps a nod to Charles Lindbergh’s single engine monoplane The Spirit of St Louis, since the old house eventually becomes airborne. Carl Fredricksen, still a young boy, wanders into the house and encounters Ellie, a live wire whose, spirit of adventure and whose pluck both fascinate Carl and cause him to fall in love with her. We see rapid snapshots of their lives together, as children they become pretend explorers, they grow up, marry and they start a savings jar so that they might realize Ellie’s dream of traveling to Paradise Falls in South America, but life always seems to get in the way, as they dip into their savings and Ellie’s dream is never realized. There are comical lines such as the little girl Ellie showing the little boy Carl where South America is and then telling him, “It’s just like America, only south,” or when she says to him, “You don’t talk much do you?,” although even if he did he would have found it difficult to get a word in edgewise.
There are subplots galore in this adventure, including an evil land developer who bears a striking resemblance to those bad guys in the Matrix movies. Suffice to say that the encounter with the land developer provides the inspiration for Carl Fredricksen to realize Ellie’s dream, even though she has long since passed away.
Although, Up is a film that packs a ton of fun, there are lessons to be learned from this film, but they are presented subtly and not in a preachy fashion. Those lessons are, that we cannot let life get in the way of holding fast to our dreams, no matter how big or how small they may be, because they are what keep us young and it is the pursuit and fulfillment of those dreams that bring us true happiness. Life is an adventure and how we make the journey and who we travel that road with is what makes life special.
Reviewed by Joe Montague
Reviewed May 2009
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