Pixar Hits It Into the Stratosphere Again - 'Up' Review

Posted on June 23, 2009 - 6:44pm by michael So by now I've seen Monsters vs. Aliens and Up, as well as the preview for the much-anticipated 9, and I'm pretty sure that this means I've seen most of the roster for what will be the 2009 nominees for Best Animated Feature. I just saw the preview for 9 this afternoon and it looks pretty freaking awesome, and I loved Monsters vs. Aliens to death, but Up is gonna win the Oscar. The nominees won't even be announced for about another six months, but this is Michael DeZubiria for Hollywire predicting here and now that Up is gonna bring the statue home. And if a better animated movie comes out this year, I can't wait to see it.

In a time when animated movies are populated with cutesy little kids and talking animals, it's an amazing and uplifting change to see one come along that stars not one but two grumpy old men in the twilight years of their lives, one of whom is desperately trying to fulfill the dreams of his boyhood that went unrealized and instead turned into the regrets of his adulthood.

The movie starts out with the story of a little kid named Carl who meets a little girl named Ellie and both are surprised to discover a mutual fascination with exploring and with the adventures of a famous adventurer named Charles Muntz, who makes fantastic journeys in his gigantic zepellin, and who makes a public promise to bring back a live specimen of a mythical creature on his next trip through the skies of Venezuela, a trip from which he never returns.

Adults in the audience will get the joke that the distant, magical land of Venezuela isn't really that far away at all, but the kids will be indifferent, having already been swept away by the prospect of these two kids planning to set off on spectacular adventures of their own.

[caption id="attachment_41264" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A sampling of the phenomenal scenery to be found in Up."][/caption]

But almost immediately the movie takes a completely different tact. We get a musical montage that probably reaches an emotional depth the effectiveness of which I don't think I've ever seen equalled in an animated film. We see these two people grow up, date, get married, build an unspectacular but charming home together, and save their pennies at the conspicuous cost of never having children, until Ellie's health declines and they both begin to accept the reality that they will probably never be able to have a cute house together at the top of the cliff next to the waterfall.

Very soon after the opening credits, the movie cuts to the present day, with Carl living alone in his and Ellie's home, now a lone reminder of a simpler past, surrounded on all sides by the constant construction of towering skyscrapers. By this point, the movie is just beginning, yet it's already told more story than most other movies do in their entire running time these days.

I have noticed that few amazing advances have been made that were as breathtaking as Toy Story almost 15 years ago, but Up has reached a level of animated perfection that is so engrossing that it gives the feeling that anything more realistic would destroy the charming atmosphere and break into the realm of creepy weirdness, like that atrocious dancing baby.

But the real success of the movie is the way it captures our habit of forming elaborate dreams and placing them on the pedestals of our own futures, only to slowly watch them become less and less likely and then, ultimately, watch ourselves settle slowly but rather comfortably into the quiet, everyday lives that we saw our parents living as kids and never thought we could handle being stuck in ourselves. It's an unsettling but surprisingly comfortable transition from the dreams of our childhood into the realities of adult life, but Up reminds us of how important it is to hold on to our dreams, even if they remain forever only in the hoping and planning stage, because the adventures of childhood are sometimes realized in ways that we could never have imagined, and we discover how successful we've been at the strangest times and in the strangest ways.

The Bean Meter



[caption id="attachment_47561" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="5 Beans out of 5!"][/caption]