Everything about Up is an up, in the most visceral and poetic ways. Pete Docter's new Pixar animated feature is even fresher, more inventive and inspired than his previous one, Monsters, Inc.
Up takes its title from the defining act of a rickety widower, Carl Fredricksen (the voice of Edward Asner), who attaches thousands of helium balloons to his house and sails it to South America. He hopes to complete a promise he made to his wife, Ellie: traveling to Paradise Falls, trailblazed by their childhood hero, Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), who was unable to convince the exploring establishment that it was the home of a giant prehistoric bird.
The movie isn't only about a dream deferred and then fulfilled. It's also about the need to keep going up in life, whether you're a stubborn old man like Carl or an eager young boy like Russell (Jordan Nagai), the Junior Wilderness Explorer who becomes an accidental stowaway and then a full partner in the South American adventure. To keep going up without losing the warmth and fellow feeling that root one to a place and a community - that's a difficult balancing act.
But Up pulls it off minute by minute, with one unexpected gag or flight of fancy after another. Because for Docter, as for his characters, it isn't an act; the movie is an expression of how he sees family, life and the world. In opening flashbacks of Carl and Ellie setting up house, the movie may recall the jolliest, least mawkish moments of It's a Wonderful Life, but Up brings new expansiveness into old Hollywood traditions. Carl learns to see some of Ellie in Russell, but he also learns to appreciate Russell for himself: as a good kid whose parents' divorce may be as hard on him as widowhood is on Carl.
Visually, Up is one of the most astonishing of all Pixar creations, precisely because it starts with unassuming elements: a modest gingerbread-like house ascending into the heavens on balloons, a man who shrinks with age into a cube, a rotund Asian boy whose self-worth depends on dozens of merit badges. Docter and his co-writer and co-director, Bob Petersen, without a hint of self-consciousness, have conceived the whole movie in contrasts. They're not just between round and rectangular images, but also between lines that jut up and send our focus to the heavens and those that spread out on the horizon and direct our vision back to Earth.
