The Case for Ups and Downs

Going into a Pixar movie, you expect a lot. The House of Mouse may be gobbling up a lot of businesses these days, but one would imagine that the Mouseketeers would not mess with a formula that has created such amazing movies as the Toy Stories and Monster’s Inc. Pixar’s last movie was the wonderful Wall-E. So Up had a lot to live up to. Wall-E was good. Up is even better.

Up was preceded by another fantastic Pixar short, this one about storm clouds creating babies, which managed to be both funny, sad and uplifting. It set a high standard for the main feature. But Up scaled that mountain with ease.

Where Wall-E relied on a lot of physical comedy and whole lot of silence to get around the creepy robot-on-robot love aspects, Up does not have that problem. It is mainly talk, and grumpy old man talk as well, as old man Carl finds a cute little eager menace to try and get rid of. I personally found it great that Russell is visually Asian American, something not raised at all during the entire course of the film (looking back, the set up struck me as a bit of a family friendly Gran Torino). These two have great chemistry, and so I was a bit annoyed when more characters showed up, though it did not take long for me to grow very fond of Dug the dog.

As much as the dialogue is great, it is actually the talk-free montage scenes that pack the biggest wallop. I had heard that the “life passage” montage at the start was powerful – little did I know that I would be on the verge of tears as the simple images and sad music showed the sad toll of time.

And - of course, and hooray - John Ratzenberger is in there too.

It would have been a completely wonderful movie experience were it not for the unhinged woman behind me who shrieked in delight in terror at every little thing that happened on the screen. Luckily, Up kept me in spirits high enough that it didn't bother so much that I went on a homicidal rampage. She may not be so lucky next time.

Verdict: Up is heart warming, funny, sweet, wonderful. Sure, the final showdown is very kiddie movie, but all its fairly standard parts add up to a fantastic movie whole. 9 balloons out of 10.