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Up Review
Ten out of ten for Pixar!
The company’s 100 percent record continues with this, their tenth feature made in 3D (as opposed to the recent retrofitted Toy Story re-releases).
A soaring story about an old man rediscovering the better part of himself, Up is a poignant, unpredictable, wild and adventurous yarn, a family film which has something for young and old alike.
Mind you, for a while it looks like Up is going to be a downer. You sense the unease rippling through the lower halves of the age demographic when, about five minutes into a spunky prologue, intrepid pre-pubescents Carl and Elie abruptly morph into newly weds, and then not-so-newly weds.
They gray and stoop before our eyes, youthful dreams of exploration traded in for the comforts of home and domestic bliss. Elie wants a baby but can’t have one. Their savings for the holiday of a lifetime are eaten up by this rainy day, that domestic disaster, until there’s no more lifetime left – not for Elie, anyway. That leaves us with Carl, a grumpy homebody who makes WALL-E look like a chatterbox. Where on earth is this going, you wonder?
Carl makes an unlikely protagonist, all he wants to do is stay put. But the developers destroy the neighbourhood all around him, until his is the last home left standing. No matter that he refuses to sell he knows they’ll get rid of him one way or the other.
But Carl has a plan. He’ll go – and willingly – but he’ll take his house with him. Tying a thousand helium balloons to his homestead, Carl disconnects himself from the grid and then it’s up, up and away. Next stop: Paradise Falls, the South American lost world he and Elie always dreamed of.
Up: Edward Asner and Jordan Nagai
Directed by Pete Docter (Monsters Inc) with co-writer Bob Peterson, Up follows a carefully plotted trajectory from melancholy to exhilaration, inertia to adventure. Once in South America Carl (voiced by Edward Asner) will encounter a whacky multi-coloured bird that answers to the name of Kevin, a talking mutt, and become embroiled in a fierce duel with a legendary explorer.
But his most important relationship is with Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai), the little boy who knocks on his door as the house drifts along 1000 feet above the ground. This kid is a chubby little cub scout – a “Wilderness Explorer” – working on his badges. He’s everything Carl used to be, a long, long time ago; he’s fearless, curious and excited about the world, and he has an infinite heart. The old man wants nothing to do with him, but he really doesn’t have any choice.
Carl’s absurd attachment to his house and his belongings is a subtle satiric comment on our own materialist bent – the image of the old geezer dragging his home through the jungle and over the mountains should strike a chord with anyone desperately trying to hold down a mortgage.
This is a more exuberant, broad-brush adventure than WALLE or Ratatouille. Which mode you prefer is just a matter of personal taste, but on a technical level it’s hard to fault anything here. The 3D effect is used fairly discreetly, but definitely enhances a vertiginous succession of cliffhangers and dogfights. This is definitely one of the must-see movies of the year.
Up Reviews
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