Up
Carl Fredricksen heads for the skies in Up
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EXCLUSIVE by Tom Powell. |  |
Friday, 09, Oct 2009 09:33
Directed by Peter Docter, our October 9th in cinemas, starring Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson, Jordan Nagai and Delroy Lindo, running time 96 minutes.
In a nutshell
Up, up and away
What's it all about?
In Pixar's tenth feature film, the first to be presented in 3D, widowed balloon vendor Carl Fredricksen escapes a humdrum retirement in search of the adventure he and his late wife Ellie had dreamt of since childhood.
As a construction site encroaches on the home he shared with Ellie, Carl airlifts the whole structure out of the city with hundreds of thousands of helium balloons. Coming along for the ride to the Shangri La-esque Adventure Falls in South America is eight-year-old wilderness explorer Russell.
Adventure turns out to be a lot different than either senior citizen or schoolboy had anticipated, with an inquisitive mythical bird and an army of talking dogs trained by Carl's childhood hero getting firmly in the way.
Who's in it?
Edward Asner takes the lead as initially-cantankerous Carl, with newcomer Jordan Nagai as his young stowaway Russell.
Christopher Plummer voices the Charles Lindbergh-inspired Charles F Muntz, while Delroy Lindo and co-director Bob Peterson get some of the best lines as talking dogs Alpha and Dug.
As an example
Dug: "My name is Dug. I have just met you and I love you."
Carl: "This is crazy. I finally meet my childhood hero and he's trying to kill us. What a joke."
Dug: "Hey, I know a joke! A squirrel walks up to a tree and says, 'I forgot to store acorns for the winter and now I am dead.' Ha! It is funny because the squirrel gets dead."
Dug: "I hid in your porch because I love you."
What the others say
"Winsome, touching and arguably the funniest Pixar effort ever, the gorgeously rendered, high-flying adventure is a tidy 90-minute distillation of all the signature touches that came before it." - Hollywood Reporter.
"Up more than does the Michelangelos of mainstream animation proud; it still soars miles above every multiplex offering out there." - Time Out New York
"This movie is remarkable for a brilliant montage sequence at the very beginning, sketching out Carl's early married life with childhood sweetheart Elie. It is a masterclass in narrative exposition, and the moments explaining their childlessness will bring a lump to your throat." - The Guardian
So is it any good?
When Up premiered at the Cannes film festival last May it reduced a room of hardened critics more prone to booing than blubbing to tears within the first ten minutes.
The opening montage that shows the progression from first meeting between nervous boy and tomboy to a husband mourning his beloved wife owes much to Hollywood's silent era, and shows just how much the already worldly-wise Pixar has grown up - death is nothing new to Disney, but miscarriage is.
It is in this first act of a film divided into three that another of the most glorious movie moments of the year takes place as Carl resolves to honour the memory of his late wife through the beauty of helium balloons and the improbable lift they give to the house they shared.
Powered by a favourable wind Carl and Russell are transported through the urban landscape they leave behind - where the CGI reaches new heights courtesy of hundreds of thousands of balloons reflecting off the glittering cityscape - to the windswept, barren backdrop of Adventure Falls.
The message of childhood dreams not being quite what they are is hammered home by the transformation of Carl and Ellie's idol from a noble personification of the great age of exploration to a sword-wielding, talking-dog-toting crackpot.
Before the dogs in biplanes and a freefalling dirigible come into it though, the film takes us through more familiar Disney territory in which lots of cute, marketable characters are thrown at the screen, albeit in glorious 3D.
But it cannot detract from the beauty of a film that combines the colour of Toy Story and the humour of Ratatouille with the heart of Monsters Inc and the soul of WALL-E.
A movie about a friendship between a grumpy, grieving pensioner and a lonely, chubby boy with an absent father? It could only be Pixar, which with Up truly has reached new heights.
9/10
Matthew Champion