Up Release Date: November 9, 2009 Own it on Blu-ray and DVD Directors: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson (co-director) Writers: Pete Docter (screenplay & story), Thomas McCarthy (story), Bob Peterson (story) Stars: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson, Delroy Lindo, Jerome Ranft MPAA Rating: G HoboTrashcan’s Rating:

Whatever Pixar is paying Pete Docter, they should double it.

Docter is the director and driving force behind Monsters, Inc. and Up, the two best films the company has produced thus far, which, considering the quality of Pixar’s films, is truly saying something. Docter has an amazing ability to connect with an audience – to make a film that entertains children while simultaneously resonating with the adults sitting next to them in the theater. Instead of simply creating an eye-catching movie that kids will drag their parents to, Docter seeks to create films that adults can be just as excited to see as their children are.

For children, Up is the story of a cranky old man who attaches balloons to his house and floats away to a tepui in South America. Along the way, he befriends an energetic young Wilderness Explorer, a talking dog and a colorful, exotic bird. The good guys battle an evil old man and his pack of dogs in a wild adventure that culminates with a huge battle scene inside a dirigible. It’s an action-packed and entertaining film filled with colorful characters and plenty of adventure that kids will love.

And for most directors of children’s movies, that probably would have been enough. But Docter, along with the rest of the creative team at Pixar, isn’t content to simply put out a superficial movie that kids will enjoy. He wants to tell a story, one that everyone in the theater will be invested in.

That’s why, for adults, Up is something completely different. It’s an emotional tale dealing with love, loss and growing old. Carl Fredricksen, the cranky old man, loses the woman he has loved since childhood and is left to spend his remaining years inside the home they built together, literally watching the world outside pass him by as the neighborhood he lives in is torn down to put up high-rises. He misses the love of his life, Ellie, and feels an overwhelming sense of regret that the two of them were never able to visit Paradise Falls, the beautiful tepui in South America that their childhood hero, Charles Muntz, spent his life exploring.

The opening 20 minutes of the film are absolutely brilliant. We first see Carl as a little kid watching newsreel footage of Muntz. From there, he meets Ellie and the two form an explorer’s club together. We then see an extended montage spanning the couple’s life together, culminating in Ellie’s death. This opening sequence is essential to the film, since it establishes Carl’s motivation for affixing balloons to his house and flying to South America, and in the wrong hands it could have easily felt forced or schmaltzy. But Docter handles it perfectly and is able to create a bond between Carl and the audience.

From there, the film shifts into a more straightforward, action-oriented kids’ film, but it manages to keep you emotionally-invested in Carl’s story along the way. His gradual transformation from a grumpy old man who has closed himself off to the world to a protector and father-figure of Russell, the overzealous young Wilderness Explorer who inadvertently ends up along for the ride when he shows up at Carl’s doorstep hoping to earn a merit badge for assisting the elderly.

Dug and Kevin, the two animal friends rounding out Carl’s newfound clan, definitely seem like they are aimed more at entertaining the kids in the audience, but at 28, I still thoroughly enjoyed both of them (and have a feeling I’m not the only adult who did). Dug wears a collar created by Muntz that allows him to verbalize his thoughts, which adds an incredibly entertaining wrinkle to the film. And Kevin, the mischievous multicolored bird that looks like a cross between an ostrich and a parrot, is absolutely hilarious, particularly in a scene where the bird mimics Carl’s mannerisms.

The bonus features included on the three-disc release really allow you to appreciate the level of thought that went in to crafting this film. There are a series of short documentaries on the second disc that each deal with a different character or facet of the film. There is a documentary about Carl, one about Russell, one about Kevin and one focusing on the dogs in the film. There are also documentaries focusing on the balloons, Carl’s home and the musical score.

These documentaries show you the attention to detail and the care that went into crafting each character and aspect of the film. The animators studied old people to get Carl’s mannerisms right. They brought in a dog expert to help them get the behavior of the pack of dogs down pat. They built a scale model of Carl’s house to get the lighting and animation right on it. They animated 10,297 different balloons to make sure the house’s ascension into the sky was as believable as possible.

In a 20-minute documentary on the first disc entitled “Adventure Is Out There!” a number of people involved in the making of the film headed out to South America to experience the tepuis firsthand. They actually climbed up one of the giant flattop mountains themselves just for the experience. The documentary is great because it actually shows you things they observed on this expedition that ended up in the film.

Two alternate scenes also help to show you the thought process that went it to crafting the overall story. “The Many Endings of Muntz” shows the evolution of Muntz’s final scene in the film and why they decided to script it the way they did. “Married Life” shows a different version of the opening montage with Carl and Ellie, one that involved the two playfully punching each other, which didn’t play well with their test audience. Seeing the evolution of these two scenes again allows you to appreciate just how much thought really goes into making these movies.

There are also a number of other bonus features that are entertaining, if not particularly insightful. There are two animated shorts – Partly Cloudy, which was paired with Up in theaters, and Dug’s Special Mission, a new animated short created just for this DVD and Blu-ray release. There are also a number of promos and trailers and a “Global Guardian Badge” game for the kids.

Whether or not you have children, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Up. The Blu-ray release (which looks absolutely beautiful), comes with a DVD and digital copy of the film, so if you have a Blu-ray player, it’s definitely the way to go. In fact, pick up a copy for everyone on your Christmas list to ensure that Pixar has the money to offer Docter that much-deserved raise.

Written by Joel Murphy. Up is available today on Blu-ray and DVD.

Similar Posts:

• Review – Monsters, Inc. (Blu-ray)
• Review – Bolt (Blu-ray)
• Review – Tangled (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
• Overrated – Cartoons
• Positive Cynicism – An entire movie studio dedicated to flaccidity

Aaron R. Davis

I don’t like it when people see a bunch of potentially awful movies in production and say “Oh, Hollywood is finally out of ideas,” as if Hollywood has ever been a place of stunning originality and remakes are a recent phenomena. But even I have to admit that some recent movie news that piled up just this week makes me wonder if every studio shouldn’t just be burned to the ground.

1. Owen Wilson is doing the voice of Marmaduke in an upcoming movie. Marmaduke talks now? What the hell could Marmaduke possibly have to talk about, especially in Owen Wilson’s cloying, over-casual, one-toned voice? Every Marmaduke joke goes like this: “Holy shit, that dog is huge and he has no idea how huge he is!” That joke was never funny. It’s mildly amusing if you’re six or a demented person in their nineties, I suppose, but otherwise, what is it that Marmaduke can do that’s going to sustain 90 minutes?

2. Walden Media, a company I respected until I read this, retaliated with the news that they were going to make a movie starring the Berenstain Bears. Those boring, fat-assed bears are the bane of many childhoods, spreading their overly-earnest, oddly-religion-tinged lessons while generally looking like the stuff of animatronic nightmares and showing about as much sense as someone who’s been kicked in the head by a mule. Unless they wind up at a furry convention, I don’t know what the drama is going to be here.

3. Three Men and a Bride. I’m sure Steve Guttenberg has nothing to do, but I always thought Tom Selleck had a mite more sense than to embrace a (second!) sequel to a movie that was a hit over 20 years ago. Can you imagine the person who’s been waiting for two decades, desperately hoping that the trilogy would be completed? I mean, other than Steve Guttenberg? Maybe he can also appear in the Short Circuit remake. The man’s probably desperate to eat.

(And with all due respect to our esteemed editor, Joel Murphy, Short Circuit was a pile of silly shit the first time around, further made ridiculous by a sequel so idiotic it made Howard the Duck look like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. So while a remake isn’t necessary, it’s not like it’s painting over The Scream here.)

4. Robert Zemeckis is finally getting around to that long-promised sequel to another 20 year-old movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. The original is a classic that sparked a renaissance in animation. The sequel will feature motion capture, a toy that Zemeckis cannot get enough of, as shown by the creepy, soulless, dead-eyed special effects creations of his own The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. He actually thinks it’s animation. But if animation is the illusion of life, those movies are the exact opposite, starring jerky zombies that look like they’re made from Silly Putty and spackle. This kind of is painting over The Scream.

5. There are six board games in development as movies: Clue, Candyland, Battleship, Monopoly, Risk and Ouija. And they all have big name crappy directors attached to them. I can’t wait to see who ends up directing the Stratego movie.

6. What the hell else is there for Shrek to do that there’s a fourth movie coming out next year? Seriously, what’s left? DreamWorks acts like there are people out there who will file into a theater and joyously watch as Shrek sits in a mortgage consultation for an hour and then just pays his bills and warms up a glass of milk before slipping off to sleep. And, sadly, looking at the box office receipts for these movies, it’s true.

7. Did you love The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle? Hollywood assumes you did, since they just announced a live-action/computer-animated hybrid of Yogi Bear. Yep. That’s happening. With Dan Aykroyd as the voice of Yogi and Justin Timberlake as the voice of Boo Boo. I know it sounds like I’m making that up, but I’m not. I’m too busy trying to stuff this gasoline-soaked rag down my throat to make up something that awful.

This is a nightmarish load of movies that I really, really want to believe no one will go to see, but history shows otherwise. After all, if no one went to see crap like this, then Hollywood wouldn’t keep making it over and over and over again. People are so accepting of garbage that as long as it’s arranged prettily enough on a nice enough plate, they will apparently sit down and eat it.

That’s what Hollywood thinks. Stop proving them right.

Unless, of course, Hollywood wants to buy my script for a great live-action/computer-animated Quick Draw McGraw movie, my concept for a Crocodile Dundee/Big Trouble in Little China/Raiders of the Lost Ark crossover, or this surefire idea I have to turn Disney’s Hall of Presidents into a crowd-pleasing action picture starring Matthew McConaughey. Those are movies you should totally go see.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com.

Similar Posts:

• Positive Cynicism – Today’s kids couldn’t fight monsters
• Murphy’s Law – What’s in a name?
• Murphy’s Law – So it’s come to this: a Short Circuit remake
• Murphy’s Law – Can’t stop The Rock
• Murphy’s Law – Same old, same old