Up
Directed by: Pete Doctor
Pixar; 2009
After watching Up, Pixar’s latest film, part of me wondered if a backlash against the reigning champion of animation would ever occur. There are certainly individuals who can’t stand the work they do, but one wonders if the lone dissenters in a sea of praise are doing it merely to be contrary. Because as Up proves, even just a good Pixar film still stands firm above the competition.
Up opens with some old-timey movie footage of famed adventurer Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer) as young Carl watches with awe. On his way home from the screening, Carl meets a fellow Muntz enthusiast named Ellie. The two of them make a childhood vow to one day live at the top of Paradise Falls, the South American destination where their hero sailed off to in search of fame and glory. The film wastes no time and heads into a montage of the two falling in love, getting married and living their lives together (a cliche to be sure, but one that still manages to be poignant).
As the effects of old age arrive, tragedy strikes and Carl (well-cast as Ed Asner) finds himself alone, miserable and regretful, fixated on the vow he and Ellie made as children but never realized. Forced from all sides to move from his house in the midst of urban sprawl, Carl decides to honor his wife by taking the adventure they never got to, filling his house full of balloons and sailing off to Paradise Falls. Of course, the plan goes awry, mainly due to Russell, the grating young boy scout who was unlucky enough to be standing on Carl’s porch as he lifts off.
Coming off of what is arguably Pixar’s best film, Up veers away from the photo-realism of WALL-E in favour of more cartoon-like character design and goofier plot developments. Carl’s head is distractingly square and his hands oddly flat, while Russell’s body seems to resemble an egg. It may seem petty to denounce cartoon-like characters in a film that isn’t, in fact, real life, but Pixar’s strength lies in its ability to push the boundaries of animation through realism, story and cinematography. To watch Carl, who resembles Waldorf and/or Statler from The Muppets, is to be constantly reminded that yes, this is an animated film.
Another glaring reminder of this is an army of dogs fitted with special collars that allow them to speak. It simultaneously provides the film with its biggest laughs (especially from a fierce-looking Doberman whose malfunctioning collar reduces its snarl to something more at home on a Chipmunks album) and its most ridiculous element. It seems lazy and thrown in, like punch-up to give the film some comic relief. Again, we expect more from the Pixar team than dogs that talk in funny voices.
This isn’t to say that Up isn’t a thoroughly enjoyable experience, it merely doesn’t consistently live up to Pixar’s self-imposed incredibly high standards of quality. It is a much safer film than WALL-E, a film that dared audiences to embrace a garbage robot and an utter lack of dialogue for its first forty minutes. Up does benefit from a subtle use of 3-D (a Pixar first) and thematic metaphors. As Carl’s house becomes increasingly weighed down when balloons float off into the clouds or pop under the pressure, so too does Carl in his stubborn unwillingness to relinquish the past and move forward. It’s not until he lets go that he truly has his adventure, his spirits lifted like so many helium-filled vessels. Heady subject matter for animated fare, and tackled gracefully; proof that even merely a good Pixar film is great by any other standard.
