Directed by: Pete Docter and Bob PetersonStarring: Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, and Bob Peterson
Other Actors of Note: John Ratzenberger and Delroy Lindo
Plot: By tying thousands of balloon to his home, 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Right after lifting off, however, he learns he isn't alone on his journey, since Russell, a wilderness explorer 70 years his junior, has inadvertently become a stowaway on the trip. Taken from www.imdb.com.
So there's this little company, you've never heard of them, they're called Pixar. They're a little art-house-indie development company that's strictly underground and are mostly unknown to the general public. Indeed, the only premier Pixar's movies have ever had was in a Hoboken basement where 4 people attend and 3 of them were promptly killed to keep it non-conformist. This is why you pay me my nominal fee of $1000 and the blood of a virgin a day so that I can dig up these hard to find gems and bring them to your door. [/sarcasm]
So yeah, Pixar made another movie, this time our protagonist is Carl Fredicksen (Ed Asner) a crotchety old man who we first meet as a 10-year-0ld boy watching a movie serial about Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) an adventurer who with his zeppellin "The Spirit of Adventure" and his army of loyal dogs went deep into the jungles of South America and discovered the lost land of "Paradise Falls." While finding the lost world Carl discovered a rare species of giant bird, but his skeleton is dismissed as bullshit so he heads off into the jungle to find proof.
Carl goes walking home and meets fellow adventure-enthusiast Ellie who has the bitchinest club house on the block. She shows Carl her adventure book and tells him of her dream of moving her clubhouse to Paradise Falls and makes Carl promise that she'll help him get there.
We get a musical montage of Carl and Ellie falling in love, getting married, fixing up the clubhouse into a real house, dreaming of having children, the emotional scene where they find out that Ellie can't have children, the two growing old together, Carl realising that he didn't keep his promise and trying to make good in the last mintue just as Ellie gets hospitalized and dies. This scene goes to prove that even in my jaded dark-hearted cynacism, Disney still has the power to make me bawl like a little bitch in public.
So anyway, as a jaded old man Carl totally bashes some guy over the head for running over his mail box and gets declared a public menace and is about to be sent to a nursing home when in a last minute effort he flies his house away via an obscene amount of helium balloons.
Unfortunately Wilderness Adventurer Russle (Jordan Nagai) was looking for the snipe that Carl told him to find under the porch and gets caught up in the adventure. They make it to Paradise falls and meet up with a giant bird, dubbed "Kevin", and a dog with a collar that makes it able to talk named "Dug."
Of course, Dug (Bob Peterson) is not the only talking dog, it turns out he's one of Charles Muntz' super smart dogs on the search for the bird and they are lead back to Muntz's blimp where he decides that they've come to kidnap his bird and shit gets real.
Ed Asner is a wonderful voice actor who anyone who grew up in the 90s will either know as J. Jonah Jameson from "Spider-Man: The Animated Series", Hudson from "Gargoyles", or Seargent Mike Cosgrove from "Freakazoid." Despite which of these roles you remember him for your first thought upon hearing his voice will no doubt be "holy shit, he's still alive?"
Asner's voice makes him perfect for the spiritual PG-rated brother of "Gran Torino's" Walt Kowalksi (He even has his own Asian kid to mentor to!) naturally he feels regret for never having the adventure he promised his late wife he would and blah blah climactic scene blah blah character growth blah blah movie trope. But it works! I swear! Asner works flawlessly as a comedic character and as a dramatic character.
Bob Peterson, who I originally thought was Kevin James, is the source of a good number of the movie's laughs as Dug, the dumb but lovable dog. Between his overly polite broken English and his hatred of squirrels there's really no point in the film where Dug isn't funny.
Peterson also plays Alpha, the sub-villain of the film. Alpha is a Doberman Pincher but his voice collar is broken and he sounds like a chipmunk, this joke is further played out when Muntz fixes the collar and Alpha now has a ridiculously deep voice.
The shining star of this movie is Christopher Plummer as Charles Muntz. Muntz bears a strong resemblence to the late Paul Newman and fits the archetype of the 1940s he-man adventurer character.
Pixar is famous for having some dark and frankly disturbing villains in their series, up until recently the darkest they had gone was the psychotic "superhero" Syndrome from "The Incredibles" with Hopper from "A Bugs Life" hot on his tail. I can honestly say that Charles Muntz tops every single Pixar villain combined.
Muntz comes into the film friednly and cordial, every bit the hero that Carl once idolized but we see that his hunt (which has gone on for about 68 years) for the bird has left him a little, how can I put this nicely, crazy like a fucking loon. Upon suspecting Carl as another bird thief he begins to show Carl his collection of adventure gear taken from the corpses of past interlopers in a scene that might as well involve the works "My severed heads, let me show you them."
As if this is not menacing and mental enough he goes on to send his army of dogs chasing after Carl, Russel, and Kevin. He then tries to burn down Carl's house, drops Russel out of the bottom of his zeppelin whilst very high in the air, comes at Carl with a sword, and then in quite possibly the most disturbing turn in the movie starts opening fire on Russel with a hunting rifle, ultimately bashing down the door to the house with the butt of the gun. It's really the point when he begins trying to kill an 8-year-old that you realize that Muntz is a fucking maniac. He's the Joker of Disney villains.
As always the visuals are breathtaking to a point that I don't feel like mentioning them further as we all know the score by now.
This film is easily Pixar's most adult and I think that may hurt it. It's not that the movie is filled with questionable content as it's easily half as dark as "The Incredbles" it's just that the story has a lot to do with things that small children and even older children won't really get.
At at least 3 points in this movie I was literally in tears and I'm a jaded soulless cunt. It's emotional and beautiful in its metaphors for life, love, and dealing with the loss of loved ones. While these topics aren't something important for children to learn, they're hard to grasp for someone whose biggest choice lies in whether or not their underoos should have pictures of Power Rangers or Transformers on them. In the past Pixar has made children's films that are watchable to adults, but in this case we have an adult's film that's watchable to kids.
Now, adressing the "darkness" of the film the aformentioned rifle scene as well as the sight of blood on the construction worker's head when Carl beans him with his cane and the "miscarriage" scene have all been sighted as too much for children.
Does the world get qmnesia quite often or am I the only one who remembers "The Goonies" opening with several murders, Mufasa being brutally slain by Scar and Scar devoured by cackling hyenas, two bumbling crooks preparing to kill a 10-year-old Kevin McAllister, pretty much everything about "Monster Squad", Frollo quite obviously (even for kids) lusting after Esmerelda in the "Hunchback of Notre Damme", Syndrome getting sucked into the intake of a jet engine, at least 2 cases of an evil sorceress trying to poison someone in "Snow White" and "The Emperor's New Groove", a body count that ranks near 1000 in "Atlantis:The Lost Empire", and Nazi faces melting in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"? That's not even touching on any of the things in "A Nightmare Before Christmas".
So let me ask you, is a small bloody spot on a man's head from a small injury, a tastefully handled exposition of infertility (it wasn't a miscarriage, if it was they would have shown her develop a pregnant belly, the crib was just showing them getting ahead of themselves the same way they did with Paradise Falls and the wall mural), and a man firing a rifle in the general direction of a child (admittedly that was pretty hardcore, but does it really top a dead body in a walk-in freezer or a shotgun blast to a gill-man's chest?) really so horrible? Kids are more resiliant than you think. I think if I can handle "Robocop" at age 4 the average 8-year-old can handle this of all things.
As expected, Pixar outdoes itself in delivers a powerful, beautiful, and entertaining movie whose influence and themes resonate long after you've left the theater.
I give "Up" a 5 out of 5. But honestly, if you're expecting any less out of Pixar at this point you're probably an asshole.
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