October 2009
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Up (U)
Printed 7th October 2009

How do they keep doing it? Bettering themselves? Perhaps they’ve struck a deal with the devil? Because it is now a sheer impossibility of possibilities that Pixar keep producing such amazing, envelope-pushing, industry-benchmarking films.

Their latest “best film so far” is Up. A return to the Pixar-favoured, unconventional buddy comedy formula that has served them so well before (Toy Story / Finding Nemo / Ratatouille), Up is the uplifting story of one grumpy 78-year-old balloon salesman’s (voiced by Ed Asner) attempt to fulfil a lifelong dream of seeing the wilds of South America by tying thousands of helium-filled balloons to his home to float there, and the young 8-year-old wilderness explorer (voiced by Jordan Nagai) that gets tangled amongst the strings along the way.

A wonderful fantastical adventure, Up is so good that it is arguably up there with the Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland and deserves to be instantly enrolled alongside these classics in the top triumvirate of the escape to a magical realm, fairy tale genre. Of course what sets Up apart from this esteemed company and their many pretenders is its main character: here kids (and adults alike) are not asked to identify with a precocious and familiarly-problemed child but an ill-tempered, elderly pensioner. Tall order? Not for the genius minds at the best creative movie-making company on the planet.

You see, it all begins with a ten-to-fifteen minute impossibly moving (life)montage that takes the cantankerous Carl all the way from childhood to widowhood. It is more heartbreaking than watching Bambi lose her mother. More stirring than seeing Dumbo being separated from his. More affecting, even, than Jessie’s song from Toy Story 2. Be warned, you will need tissues. Only the most impenetrable of hearts could fail to slip into Carl’s slippers and understand exactly the emotions he is going through after this. But it doesn’t end there. Up is without doubt the most touching ‘toon in the Pixar canon, perhaps the most touching ‘toon you ever will lay your eyes upon, running through the full gamut of feelings right up until its heart-warming, more tissue-requiring conclusion.

Not that it’s all stony-faced seriousness. No Siree. If fact, despite the sheer depth and range of emotions Up manages to plunder, it’s also Pixar funniest film by far thanks to the cutest cartoon kid you could ever conceive of, a “talking” dog called Dug (voiced by co-director Bob Peterson), some seriously witty repartee and some perfectly judged slapstick-style comedy. To say that Carl and his uninvited wilderness explorer are an odd couple is an understatement: talkative, inquisitive, over-active, over-eager and overly optimistic, Russell is Carl’s worst nightmare (“Do you want to play a game Russell? It’s called See Who Can Go The Longest Without Saying Anything!”). Luckily for us, he’s also his perfect farcical foil.

What’s perhaps almost redundant now is to mention how eye-poppingly incredible the animation on-show from the best in the biz is. Of course it’s another step forward in completely CG rendered worlds. Every Pixar production achieves another technical milestone, this feature incorporating the increasingly-popular immersion-experience of real 3D better than anyone else has before. Naturally. Up is more cartoony than its last two predecessors WALL•E and Ratatouille though in terms of style, eschewing the photo-real for a more colour rich palette. Not to its detriment mind. There has been nothing more beautiful on-screen this year than Carl gracefully gliding through the bright blue sky in his balloon-house, its multitudinous multicoloured gasbags casting a kaleidoscope of colour upon everything that it drifts past.

Funny and exciting and impossibly moving in equal measure, there is more life and soul in this ‘toon than even most live-action movies could possibly hope to muster up. So much, in fact, that after only a few minutes you forget you are watching pixels created in a computer as you are whisked away by an enchanting story, the promise of adventure, cartoon characters that captivate you in a way that even most live-action actors can’t and a sense of wonder that is only comes along maybe once a decade, if not a generation. Pure. Cinematic. Perfection.


N.B. Up is, of course, preceded by the now-requisite Pixar short. Which has a lot to live up to after the magic of Presto that lead into WALL•E. Good thing Peter Sohn’s Partly Cloudy more than partly suffices then by supplying a sweet yet sharply comic six minutes about the cloud that is responsible for creating all dangerous child-life and the stork tasked with delivering them to expectant parents. Great sight gags galore.

*****