Heave Media

When I was a kid, I used to want to get my hands on anything fantastical. It didn’t matter what it was. Antique shops with old things that made no sense to me, a dog-eared-to-hell copy of “Where The Wild Things Are,” it didn’t matter. I loved anything that seemed adventurous. I was also hooked on movies, anything I could watch. I’d cry at everything I saw not because it was sad, but just because it would end. (Years later, my dad would site this when making jokes at my expense, but I digress.) Point is, now that I’m pushing something resembling adulthood, I’m always searching for anything that can make me believe in anything the way I did when I was four. 

And then, “Up” happened. 

Anytime you walk into a Pixar film, you expect something superior, not only in a family movie or an animated film, but in a piece of cinema in general. Last year, with the brilliant “Wall-E,” they managed to get away with things no other filmmaker or studio could possibly pull off; a wordless first act, a future shock nightmare in the guise of a summer family movie, a grandiose social message wrapped in one of the most unironically romantic love stories to hit theaters in what feels like forever. But with “Up,” director Pete Docter (“Monsters Inc.”) has really pulled a coup, a gorgeous meditation on undying love and old age that steals the breath away from the first frame. If what I just described sounds like a portentous piece of Oscar bait, well, this little kiddie movie just opened the Cannes Film Festival. 

The film is the story of Carl Fredericksen (Ed Asner), a crochety 78-year-old living in a house surrounded by the industrial world. In what will probably go down as my favorite ten minutes of a film in 2009, we see the lifelong love story between Carl and his wife Ellie, from the time they met as adventure-seeking kids to the day Carl held balloons at her funeral. Presently, Carl stubbornly keeps their house exactly where it took root when they were kids even as faceless men in sharp suits try to force him out. Eventually he’s sent off to pasture in a retirement home, and faces losing the last piece of Ellie he has left. 

Facing this sad end to his life, Carl has a brainstorm, bought on by he and Ellie’s shared dream to fly to South America like their childhood hero Charles Muntz, a disgraced adventurer. He launches an endless bundle of helium balloons out of his chimney and takes flight, shouting good riddance to the world along the way. However, as he tries to sit and enjoy his flight, he hears a knock on the door. On his porch, absolutely terrified, is Russell (Jordan Nagai), a plucky-to-the-point-of-insanity Wilderness Explorer (basically a Boy Scout) who ends up coming along with Carl on his trip to Paradise Falls. 

From there, I won’t spoil too much more. They befriend a gigantic bird and a talking dog named Dug (Bob Peterson), though I promise you that he’s not a talking dog like you’ve ever seen a talking dog in a movie before. They also encounter an aged Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), who now lives in Paradise Falls in his zeppelin, the Spirit of Adventure. 

What amazes me about Pixar movies is the prevailing humanity and sincerity to everything they do in a time where any movie seems to have to employ cold irony or realism or both to win acclaim. Both Russell and Carl are fully realized people, one at the beginning of life and one nearing its end, who live for their dreams. Carl always wanted nothing but to travel the world with Ellie, and then life happened; Russell is able to relate to this far better than Carl expected. Even Muntz is not simply a stock mysterious figure in an adventure film; he’s spent his entire life trying to escape disgrace for something the world wasn’t ready to see yet, and reclaim a little bit of the glory of his youth. That’s the central idea of “Up,” the fading of glory and the beauty of embracing one’s best years as a beautiful history to look back upon and smile. Not a bad trick for a summer movie put out by Disney. 

Don’t let that last paragraph make you think this is a ponderous affair, though. The beauty of Pixar’s movie is that they find the real in the fantastic, and make growing old seem absolutely magical. Visually, the film is as lush as I’ve ever seen; I’d actually recommend not seeing it in digital 3D, as that format tends to flatten and squash the colors of any film that runs in it, and if ever you’ve needed the full color spectrum, it’s for this film.  

Overall, “Up” is the year’s best film so far. If you’ve ever been taken away by the magic of movies, and want to remember what that feels like, or just feel it again, this is your film. And me? I still want to believe in zeppelins and floating houses, and I’ll be damned if, when the credits rolled, I didn’t again for even a few minutes.