UP

Directed by Peter Docter and Bob Petersen (co-director); screenplay by Bob Petersen and Pete Docter

That PIXAR continues to make animated films as original, fun and interesting as they do is remarkable; that they have continued to build on subsequent successes to release films that are increasingly more mature and with more serious overtones yet retaining a sense of adventure appealing to children and adults alike, can rightfully be called astonishing.

Looking back to just 2007, Ratatouille gave us the marvelous childhood flashback of the food critic; last year, WALL-E’s first act was rendered with no dialogue but a plethora of emotion and sub-text; and now UP gives us a montage portraying a lifetime of devotion between Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Ed Asner) and his first and only love, Ellie, moving through her inability to have children to her eventual death, leaving Carl alone with his memories and the home they lovingly built as the outside world threatens his and its existence, urban development crowding around the old wooden house. That such serious issues are presented as touching facts and not downers (avoiding the pitfalls of, for example, The Tale of Despereaux, which came to feel suffocating), is undoubtedly due to the deft touch of the filmmaking team, specifically director and co-writer Peter Docter (director, Monsters, Inc.), screenwriter and co-director Bob Peterson (screenplay, Finding Nemo) and executive producer John Lasseter (executive producer, BOLT, WALL-E, Ratatouille, and one of the other real contemporary animation champs, Meet the Robinsons).

UP centers on 78-year-old Carl who, faced with being placed in a retirement home, ties thousands of balloons to his house and takes flight to travel to South America, a lifelong unfulfilled dream he and Ellie had shared since childhood. Soon after the house lifts off, the first of several spectacular colorful visuals, Carl finds he has a stowaway, Russell, an overweight but good-natured neighborhood boy and would-be explorer, whose back-story touches on serious issues of his own (divorced parents, a distant father). After much curmudgeonly grumbling on Carl’s part, the two eventually bond and land in South America where Carl comes face to face with his childhood hero, the famous explorer Charles Muntz (voiced with much relish by Christopher Plummer), whose life has become (evilly) devoted to capturing and bringing back to the civilized world, dead or alive, a rare bird, befriended by Carl and Russell, and who they fight to save.

Lest you think the film is all doom and gloom, rest assured it is first and foremost a great ride, with many humorous touches throughout, including a dog named Dug (wonderfully voiced by screenwriter Bob Peterson) whose thoughts are transmitted by a special collar and who gave the audience some of its biggest laughs when, in mid-sentence, distracted by a squirrel (“Squirrel!”) his attention would swerve for a fleeting moment. It was the equivalent of a very clever aside, the kind of apparent throw-away that can raise comedy to the level of brilliance.

As with all 3-D animated movies, the question that comes to mind is, does this really need to be in 3-D? The answer is an unsatisfying yes and no. The journey, characters and visual style would still be pleasing and engrossing in 2-D, and there are very few blatantly 3-D moments, no objects propelled towards the viewer a la Monsters vs. Aliens. Rather, the 3-D here is fittingly more like BOLT, a fellow PIXAR creation; it adds a sense of depth and perspective to the environments and characters; less about visual dazzle and more about visual reality, the 3-D is used to make it all more real.

And this where the payoff comes; it’s not simply a rendering of a house taking flight, it is a house taking flight. And, too, the wearing of 3-D glasses helps put the viewer in his or her own world, less aware of the person sitting next to them, the theater they are inside, allowing for a more immersive experience, a more dreamlike experience in which the connection between viewer and screen is less distanced. When the time inevitably comes that films can be experienced in 3-D without the use of glasses, it will be interesting to see if it is as engrossing an experience as 3-D with glasses. For it is the very act of putting on the glasses, and directing one’s attention to the screen for the experience about to unfold, that creates a much more intimate, and yet still communal, experience of being immersed in the world unfolding. We must remove the glasses at the end, and re-emerge into the normal world.

5 out of 5 stars.

Review written by Mike Fishman.