Up, Up and Away: Another New High for Pixar

Pixar's latest triumph mines buoyancy from the depths of an old man's grief

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Since this character study is also an action-adventure film, Carl has to go somewhere--Paradise Falls, obviously. But he doesn't have to leave his home. Threatened with eviction to an old folks' home, he attaches 20,000 helium-filled balloons to his house, and off it floats toward South America. But there's a stowaway on board: Russell (Jordan Nagai), a plump, determined kid who has been pestering Carl to let him "assist the elderly," the one good deed he needs to become a full Wilderness Explorer. The old man isn't pleased, but he's not stopping now.

As Docter notes, Up is driven by the idea of escape--the notion, familiar to dreamers of any age, that "you could just float away and take what you want with you." What Carl wants to take is the house where he spent a happy half-century with Ellie and where, in a sense, she still lives. Like a snail or, more likely, Atlas, Carl carries his house and the world's burden on his back; his wish for escape is also a sacred responsibility, to take Ellie to Paradise Falls.

Thanks to some extraordinarily favorable trade winds, that's where Carl and Russell land. Instantly they find the bird--a gorgeous, jollier version of Chuck Jones' cartoon Roadrunner--that eluded Muntz for decades. He's dubbed Kevin by Russell, who has a knack for attracting exotic creatures, including a pack of electronic dogs. (Peterson lends his sharp vocal skills to the lead dog, Alpha, and the goofily endearing, polylingual Dug.)

In contrast to the muted palette of Carl's home, the South American landscape is a genial riot of color that looks ravishing in what ever format the movie is shown in. Up will be projected in 3-D in many theaters, but there are no special boinggg effects, and you needn't pay the extra $3 to get the emotional or visual lift the picture delivers. In his Variety review, Todd McCarthy wrote that "the film's overall loveliness presents a conceivable argument in favor of seeing it in 2-D: Even with the strongest possible projector bulbs, the 3-D glasses reduce the image's brightness by 20%."

Echoes of Oz

The movie stirs lots of cinematic echoes, some natural--Walt Disney's Dumbo was a touchstone for Docter--and some weird. The dragging of a large structure over rugged South American terrain is also a motif in the Werner Herzog epic Fitzcarraldo. A love story continued after death: Remember Ghost? Docter also cites Thomas McCarthy's The Station Agent, "the story of a solitary guy who reconnects with the world."

The central connection, though, is with The Wizard of Oz, about a lonely girl and her flying house. The old guy alights in a wonderland, meets magical or malevolent animals and an old villain and is rejuvenated by the simple act of letting go of his obsession and caring for someone else. By the end of his adventure, he's a movie superhero, an older version of Indiana Jones. He also realizes that the small pleasures often trump the big thrills. Oz may provide death-defying fun, but what's the matter with Kansas?

Except for The Incredibles, Brad Bird's obligatorily cartoony vision of a superhero family, Up is the first Pixar feature in which the main characters are humans. Up isn't realistic either. It revels in a minimum of dialogue, deft comic underplaying and a style the Pixar people call simplexity. "We tried to push caricature," Docter says, "and the language of shapes--to make these drawings an expression of the characters. Carl wants to stay enclosed in his box of a house. He's just kind of square. His wife is more curves, almost balloon shapes, and Russell is very balloon-like." From his shape, Russell could be the child Carl and Ellie desperately wanted. Kind of takes after his mother.

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