Up

This is getting ridiculous. Name me one other studio – heck, one other actor, director, producer or screenwriter will do – with a .900 batting average. Pixar is becoming the Hollywood equivalent of that kid in high school who doesn’t just get straight-As on all her tests; she’s also good-looking, and big into extra-curriculars, and not even stuck up about it. Oh, and she’s popular, too. It’s not enough to make 10 movies and have nine of them (sorry, Cars) be brilliant, critically beloved standards of cinematic craft. They also make tons of money. Pixar, once the little studio that could, has become a world-beater. And yet when you sit down to watch their latest movie, you’re still swept up in a feeling of awe.

Up is that movie, a boy’s adventure tale in which the “boy” is an arthritic senior citizen lamenting what he considers to be a life of missed opportunities – not his, but those of his dearly departed wife, whose childhood scrapbook of great escapades was left devoid of passport stamps and photos of exotic locales. To the outside world Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) is a crusty curmudgeon, but we know better: A bravura 10-minute opening sequence follows his path from preschool to AARP, and shows us the fullness of Carl’s life with Ellie, his first and only love. The Pixar group’s facility with short films is evident in the five-minute mini-movies that introduce each new feature (this year’s entry, a stork yarn called Partly Cloudy, is a treat), but the first 10 minutes of Up are in essence the best short they’ve ever done. If you’re not crying by the time that sequence is over, I don’t want to talk to you.

The world has passed Carl by, and the simple house he shared with Ellie is now dwarfed on its block by skyscrapers and new construction. Feeling pressured by “progress,” he takes off – and takes the house with him, thanks to an elaborate rig of helium balloons strung through the chimney. (Carl is a street-corner balloon vendor.) He’s mapped out a journey to Paradise Falls, the semi-mythical South American spot that was a childhood staple of his and Ellie’s fantasies. And getting there will be considerably more than half the fun.

Director Pete Docter’s previous Pixar feature, Monsters Inc. (2001), offered a glimpse into the backstage world of little kids’ dreams. Up takes that theme and amplifies it with 70 extra years of life, love and loss; when inevitable impediments arise to threaten the success of his journey, Carl’s anxiety and irritability are given added weight thanks to our understanding of his motivations. That opening 10 minutes are the picture’s secret weapon – having seen them, we don’t need scripted moments of exposition between Carl and Russell (Jordan Nagai), a pudgy, 8-year-old stowaway, to explain where the older guy is coming from. Docter gets that an animated film is about the images, and so finds ways to tell the story without excess words whenever possible.

The voice work is superb: Asner, a fabulous grouch since his Mary Tyler Moore days, deserves to work more; and Nagai and Christopher Plummer (as a wizened explorer whom Carl encounters) offer fine support. But Up’s secret weapons are the dogs. Shortly before arriving at Paradise Falls he and Russell begin bumping into fantastic creatures, including a pack of diverse mutts fitted with space-age collars that allow them to speak more or less like humans. It’s a silly device that a lesser film would use as an excuse to boost Happy Meal sales, but Up takes the conceit and runs with it, giving the dimwitted canine hero Dug (Bob Peterson) a role that neatly straddles slapstick comedy and the unforced sentiment of having a real dog around. And when the dogs assemble en masse – sometimes as enemies to our travelers, sometimes as friends – the cascading parade of fur rivals the safari scenes in The Lion King.

Carl’s adventures with Russell and Dug isn’t quite an all-ages romp; there are some real moments of peril, which are all the more impressive given the brightly colored palette that never lets you forget you’re watching a tried-and-true ‘toon. But that’s the beauty of Up, a film that leavens its thrills with comedy and its sweetness with Carl’s geriatric tartness. It’s a joy to watch, and to wonder – with some of the same spirit of awe felt by Carl and Russell themselves – what amazing worlds Pixar will choose to conquer next.  10