The circle of life.
There are many circles of life; some huge and some small. One of the smaller ones is Pixar revealing a story for a movie that doesn’t sound all that impressive, then releasing trailers that don’t look all that impressive—looking like they may have their first dud—then the movie is released in theaters, and it’s—pow!—another near insta-classic. Prophecy says that one day this pattern will break and it will be a sign the end approaches.
Fortunately, it appears the world is safe for another year.
Up is simply a wonderful, simple adventure story about love. It’ll seem an odd comparison, but Up is what might result if someone said, “Let’s redo the idea behind Love, Actually (the 2003 movie starring Hugh Grant and a large ensemble cast that follows the lives of eight couples in London during the Christmas season) but target it to young boys.” Pretty much every story element in Up is motivated through some form of love—romantic, unrequited, undeserved, rapacious, hero worship, egotistical, parental—yet the movie still culminates in exciting chase scenes and aerial battles.
Young Carl Frederickson (Jeremy Leary; Ed Asner when grown) thinks himself the world’s biggest fan of super-explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). So when Muntz is accused of scientific fraud and returns to a lost land in Venezuela, vowing never to return until he can clear his good name, Carl barely harbors a moment of doubt.
Carl’s title as world’s biggest fan is called into doubt, though, when he runs into equally young and adventuresome Ellie (Elie Docter, daughter of director Pete Docter). A crush is immediately established, and only strengthened when she literally pushes him into breaking his arm. She has big dreams for the life of adventure she’s going to live (including a house at Paradise Falls, Muntz’s famous lost land).
Carl and Ellie eventually marry, and what follows is perhaps the most emotionally complete and affecting montage in movie history, covering the entire span of their 50-year marriage in two minutes. They never lived the life of adventure they expected, but they lived a life of happiness that would satisfy anyone. If you’re a person who cries at movies, you’ll end up crying here because Up is primarily the story of Carl Frederickson coming to terms with his new, and essentially unwanted, life without Ellie.
After events best watched without pre-description, Carl decides that if nothing else he can give Ellie a home at Paradise Falls—and puts into action a plan to use balloons to fly their house down to Venezuela. Unfortunately, young Russell (Jordan Nagai) gets snared into things and is along for the ride. That’s OK as far as Russell is concerned, as he is in pursuit of his Assisting the Elderly badge, which will promote him to the next level of Wilderness Explorers. And Russell’s dad has promised that this time, he really will attend that promotion ceremony.
Things of course don’t go smoothly as planned, and much action ensues when, once in South America, they stumble upon a mysterious bird, collar-assisted talking dogs, and Charles Muntz still seeking to clear his name (and 60 years of the effort hasn’t helped his sanity).
Directors Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.) and Bob Peterson (directorial debut but he is a long-time Pixar contributor as animator and writer) achieve two very important things with this story:
First, it is simply funny, and not the funny of lame kids’ jokes that adults are kind of embarrassed to admit they’re amused by, but simply funny for everybody. A large part of this is that they have confidence in their gags, they put it out there, get the laugh, and then move on. Unlike an over-extended Saturday Night Live skit where every laugh has to be repeated until the humor is dead, Docter and Peterson know when to move on to the next gag. As an example, one big laugh is that the leader of the dogs has a faulty collar and therefore speaks with a chipmunk voice. In lesser hands this would have been milked for every laugh and then five times after the laughs stopped. Instead, the collar gets fixed, the jokes move on, and it is brought back just when it will actually be funny again.
Second, that confidence with humor also feeds into failure to pander. It is young children who can laugh just as hard at the 100th telling of a joke as at the first. The movie doesn’t chase their laughter and it also doesn’t chase their excitement or even their complete comprehension. Up is not an adult movie, but it simply a movie for almost all ages and that includes adults as much as it does 10-year-olds. In fact, the final stages of Carl’s grief at the end of the movie are resolved without verbal explanation, and with a reliance on simply understanding adult life in a way that children only think they do; a key moment turns on a written page that is never verbalized and so actually excludes the youngest in the audience.
In that vein, parents should take note that Up is rated PG for “some peril and action.” The action does get intense and the sense of peril is real. The 3-D experience will intensify this even further, and the sound editing is very loud. At the screening attended, several toddlers were in tears at the conclusion of one chase scene, so this may be a good candidate for a parental pre-screening if you have concerns.
Although this film is not the best thing the studio has ever produced—it lags behind Ratatouille in story brilliance and animation artfulness, and it isn’t as good as the awesome simple power of the first half of Wall-E—Pixar has crafted yet another huge success with Up, which represents everything that has been great and wonderful about Pixar over the last 15 years.
Unfortunately, this surefire little circle of life may be approaching the end of an era, as there are uncertain waters ahead. The Pixar pipeline has been emptied and we now move into movies slated after the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. The next two major releases are sequels (Cars 2 then Toy Story 3). Up is Pixar’s 10th feature film, and until now each has been directed by John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Andrew Standon, or Pete Docter; each apparently trying to outdo the others. But Pixar now enters into a stretch of at least four movies that will be helmed by other directors, meaning we won’t again see a Pixar title from one of those four until at least 2014.
This is not to say that one of the greatest cinematic streaks in history is over, but if ever there was a predictable moment for the end of an unprecedented golden era for Pixar, it appears to be before us.
Screenings of Up are preceded by a 3-D Pixar short called Mostly Cloudy. It is a light comedy about a baby-delivering stork assigned the task of delivering more painful bundles of joy (such as alligator) while all the other storks are doing human babies, kittens, and puppies.
Up is a Disney•Pixar presentation
- Wide release on Friday, May 29.
- Directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
- Screenplay by Bob Peterson
- Starring Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson
- Rated PG for some peril and action
- Running time 96 minutes
- Alex’s Rating: 9 out of 10
