Up

Year: 2009
Running time: 96 minutes
Certificate: U
Language: English
Screenplay: Bob Peterson, Pete Docter
Director: Pete Docter
Starring (voices): Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer

Carl and Russell travel to South America in style.

Up opens with ten quietly heartbreaking minutes which left me emotionally devastated on first viewing. Impressionable and enthusiastic youths Carl Fredricksen (Jeremy Leary) and Ellie (Elie Docter) meet and bond over their mutual love of adventure. Growing up together, they find themselves unable to realise their most precious dream of starting a family (although you have to question why they decorated a nursery before finding this out). Ultimately they grow old together and finally the surviving Carl (Ed Asner) struggles on in a lonely existence seemingly bereft of all meaning. The largely dialogue free sequence genuinely has the power to leave you a weeping wreck. The rest of the film, while wonderful, never quite manages to match this perfect opening.

Carl is an old man living this lonely existence when the main plot begins; we find him struggling to prevent developers re-homing him in order to demolish his house and build whatever it is they intend to build. It is true this seems rather clichéd, as is the introduction of our second main character, the young boy-scout Russell (Jordan Nagai) who is clearly going to show the old man there is life after loss. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Pixar, however. On the morning he’s about to be moved to the retirement home to wait for death, he reveals how he has tied a huge wad of balloons to his house and uses them to drag him and his house away to pastures new. Outlandish, clearly, but the scene is beautifully handled and a joy to watch. Unfortunately, he has taken Russell along for the ride by mistake. The two of them go off on an adventure to place the house on the top of Paradise Falls in South America.

The relationship between the two leads is a slightly unconventional take on the well-established buddy formula (something Pixar is certainly an expert on, having used the idea in different ways in Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars and Ratatouille), and has plenty of room for comedic and emotional elements – when Russell talks about his absent dad in quietly subdued tones, it is almost as upsetting as the opening. There are a few offbeat but engaging and funny plot developments as the pair meet a huge bird who the kid names ‘Kevin’ without realising it is female, and a dog named Dug (Bob Peterson) with an electronic collar which allows him to talk.

Dug introduces himself.

The choice of lead character is inspired brilliance (par for the course for Pixar), because following a man whose life, for all intents and purposes, appears to be over learning how to care for things other than the memory of his dead wife manages to temper the very silly plot points (dogs that fly planes?) with an emotional anchor that allows you to care.

The villain is slightly weak for a Pixar film, but it doesn’t even come close to spoiling the movie, and, thanks to the trademark glorious animation, the moment when the deranged ex-adventurer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) falls to his death from his blimp gives you a queasy moment of vertigo.

Yet another superb addition to Pixar’s CV, Up will devastate you in the first ten minutes and spend the remaining running time lifting your spirits, leaving you smiling again.

Score: 8/10

Matt at NJ.com largely agrees, but Gunther at Madmind's review is clear evidence that not everybody is such a fan.