Up (2009)

Up marks the 10th feature length film to come out of the Pixar studio in the 14 years since they started making ‘full length’ movies. I recently read someone comment that Pixar is the last film house in Hollywood that can sell a film on the studio’s name alone, this is because all 10 of Pixar’s features have been technical and story powerhouses, their laser focus on quality (almost unheard of in studios these days) makes there vaunted reputation wholly earned. Up continues this trend, and like the two Pixar features immediately proceeding yet, dares to tell a story with little resemblance to a typical commercial property (as someone else commented, Ed Asner movies have never been known to open big).

Up is primarily the story of Carl Fredrickson (Asner), a widower and retired balloon salesman who uses his old product to lift his house off the ground, and fly to South America after he is threatened with forced re-location to a retirement home. Stowing away is Russell (new comer Jordan Nagai) a young ‘Wilderness Explorer’ who has made Carl the focus of his efforts to earn his "assisting the elderly" merit badge. The two take land near Paradise Falls, the exotic local to which to Carl’s late wife Ellie always dreamed of visiting. There the two end up assisting a rare bird who is being perused by an obsessive adventurer (Christopher Plummer), and in doing so team up with a lovably goofy ‘talking dog’ named Doug (Bob Peterson). The South America stuff suffers the odd slow point or two, but is on the whole everything you’d want from a Pixar movie. The highlight for me however was in the beginning of the movie, were we see a young Carl as a kid meet his future wife, and the affectionate montage of their decades long marriage together that is one of the most beautiful and emotionally moving things I’ve ever seen in animation. Huzzah to Pixar for making probably the most commercially successful film ever about the emotional lives of the elderly, and for sublimiably introducing the youngsters in the audience to Spencer Tracy and Kirk Douglas, the golden era Hollywood actors on whom the appearances of the two lead elderly characters are based. 4 ½ out of 5.