Movie review part deux: Up

by Alex Bentley

One of the key factors that has made Pixar/Disney movies such huge successes over the years has been the believability of their plots, no matter how fantastic the setting. That's no small feat when you have talking toys, bugs, monsters, fish, cars, and rats as the stars of your films. Each of these films made sense in the movie universe they occupied. More importantly, humans have always acted, well, human when they've made appearances in the films.

There have been two exceptions to this rule: The Incredibles and WALL-E. However, in The Incredibles, the main characters are superheroes, and thus immune to criticism for not acting human. Plus, there are multiple other humans in the film who are decidedly normal creatures. In WALL-E, the humans have grown cartoonishly fat due to a sedentary life in space. Aside from the strange choice of having the humans evolve from live action people to animated ones, their bulbousness can be explained away by the sci-fi nature of the film.

Pixar's latest film, Up, walks right upon that fine line of believability, making trips across that line more often than the previous nine films combined. Up tells the tale of Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner). In a nearly-wordless opening sequence that's both blissful and utterly heartbreaking, we are led through the courtship, wedding, and marriage of Carl and his wife, Ellie. They bond over their shared love of adventure and their admiration of one explorer, Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), whose exploits at a South American location called Paradise Falls captures their imagination.

Carl and Ellie's goal of traveling to Paradise Falls never materializes for one reason or another, all of which most people will relate to completely. Now a widower and in danger of losing their house to encroaching construction, Carl calls upon his years of selling helium balloons at the zoo to thwart developers (not to mention those who want to put him in a retirement home) by attaching, oh, about a million balloons to his house, tearing it from its moorings, with the intent to float to South America and Paradise Falls.

One small hitch, though: a Wilderness Explorer (a kind of Cub Scout) named Russell (Jordan Nagai) has managed to stow away on the house, turning Carl into an unwitting babysitter. Russell immediately makes things difficult for Carl, and even more so upon their arrival. They stumble into a mysterious jungle where dogs (replete with collars that allow them to speak actual words) are hunting for a rare bird. Russell, as only a child can do, quickly befriends not only a dog named Dug, but also the bird itself, which he calls ... Kevin.

Typical of Pixar, the filmmakers (in this case a group headed by co-director Pete Docter and co-director/writer Bob Peterson) do a wonderful job taking care of the details, whether it's the hilarious words/antics of Dug and Kevin (both of which [whom?] steal every scene they're in) or the glorious cinematography, which showcases the faraway landscapes beautifully (especially in 3-D, which is being employed for the first time in a Pixar film). And the opening sequence is a masterpiece of minimalism, telling the audience virtually everything they need to know about Carl's life with just a few bittersweet scenes.

Despite all the accompanying greatness, though, that sense of unbelievability crops up now and again. For most animated fare, this would never be an issue as most other studios have no problem stretching the boundaries of human ability. However, as stated before, Pixar's humans have always been down-to-earth beings, never straying beyond anything you or I could do ourselves. Perhaps it's this fact that didn't allow me to initially accept that Carl could not only get that dang house off the ground, but also guide it through thunderstorms, canyons, and forests using just curtains and, often, the strength of his 70-something-year-old body.

There's also the issue of the film perhaps being a little too “adult” for its intended audience. For years I have lauded Pixar for not dumbing down their films, but in their last two films, they seem to gone a little too far. In WALL-E, it was the message about rampant consumerism destroying the earth that seemed to be a bit much for kids (not to mention Hello, Dolly! being a key factor in the film). In Up, the nuances of Carl's bond with Ellie seem to be beyond the understanding of children. All throughout my screening were questions from kids asking, “Why is he (Carl) sad?” That's just not something that's easily explained, especially not during the film. While adults will appreciate and applaud the depth of Up, one wonders if perhaps they should lighten up a bit in their next film.

But, as in all Pixar films, issues such as that are minor in comparison to the genius of everything else on screen. From the casting (seriously, who else but Pixar would put Ed freakin' Asner as the star?) to the breathtaking animation to the simple story with complex details, Up is yet another Pixar work of art. They are now 10 for 10 in producing great films; here's hoping the streak never ends.