Set in a wonderful world of endless possibility and brightly coloured, helium filled, balloons, Up tells the story of a grieving widower who defies the odds and, rather than face a bleak end in a soulless retirement home, chases the dreams of adventure that he once shared with his lost love.
When the story begins Carl Fredricksen (the widower) is just a small child at the cinema, watching a biography of his hero; a famous explorer named Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer, The Sound of Music); and it is on his way home that he meets a girl called Ellie, who shares his passion for adventure, and will become the love of his life.
Following an unquestionably brilliant montage of the pairs life, from courtship to marriage and everything that follows, the widowed Mr Fredricksen, who by then has had enough of society (and has transformed into the Pixar version of Victor Meldrew from One Foot In The Grave), decides that he will have one huge, last ditch, attempt at fulfilling the lifelong quest of adventure that him and his wife shared; parking their house next to the waterfall at Paradise Falls in South America; and with a massive amount of helium, and more than a handful of party balloons, he floats his home out of the city centre and heads south.
Accompanying him is a loveable yet annoying young stowaway boy named Russell, who is only along for the ride so that he can earn his assisting the elderly badge for his version of the scouts. Together the pair try to get Mr Fredricksen’s house to Paradise Falls, and along the way they make friends with some of the local animals, and even run into Mr Fredricksen’s boyhood hero Charles Muntz; who may not be all that Mr Fredricksen imagined (and should, by most mathematical reasoning, actually be dead by the time they meet).
Like any Pixar film the animation looks simply stunning, and the colours are sure to mesmerize children and astound any adult viewers, and as with any Pixar film there’s the usual childish bright lights, daft comedy, and a simple story woven around some non-human characters that comes mingled in with some rather adult themes of death, bereavement and old age, meaning that there is something that audiences of most ages will be able to get out of it.
Despite the wide ranging themes, the most interesting part of the main story is the relationship between the old man and the boy that has unwittingly followed him literally thousands of miles from home, as they have a true bond that is very reminiscent of the endearing relationship that was held between Dennis the Menace and his often surly elderly neighbour Mr Wilson and whilst it’s a relationship that’s been shown on and off screen several times before, and is never fully explored, it’s the best that can really be gained from a children’s film and is nevertheless an interesting buddy dynamic.
In the end, Up will be remembered as just about every other Pixar film (bar the utterly revolutionary Toy Story) is; as a good quality kids film that will entertain the majority of under tens, and manage to keep adults from getting too bored while watching. Overall it’s a fairly standard standard kids film; it’s not the best animated film ever, and it is far from the worst; it begins with a fantastic first five minutes (which if the standard held up would have made it deserve that scandalous Oscar nomination) but then unfortunately trails off, and becomes little more than your average children’s film.
Picture:
Being an animated film, any talk of skin tones, black levels or even detail sharpness is largely pointless as it is all pretty much entirely decoded by the quality of the original Pixar animation; which just about everybody knows by now, is always first rate, usually slightly exaggerated, and always totally appropriate.
What can be said, is that not only are the colours used in Up’s 1080p presentation absolutely fantastic, vibrant and so luminous that they are almost hypnotic, but the transfer is free of any print errors, and doesn’t suffer from crush, banding or any other usual transfer issues; there’s not a single artefact, and not even a speck of grain to be seen, during the whole movie. A truly great quality transfer, although it can’t really be fairly rated against live action movies with brilliant quality transfers because, at the end of the day, it is still just a fancy cartoon.
Audio:
Up’s audio soundtrack comes via a DTS HD-MA 5.1 mix that is very impressive, not only for an animation, but for any film, and totally apt for this movie; dialogue is wonderfully well represented with excellent clarity and a weight that never gets lost, even among the more action oriented scenes, and sound completely natural whether it originates from the inside of an empty living room, a large cave or even a cramped jungle.
All 5 speakers are regularly engaged, with appropriate amounts of ambience, and plenty of effects, coming from the rear channels, with excellent pans and dynamics evident throughout the mix. The LFE channel is also often in use, for both subtle understated groans and the few booms that the film has to offer, and is again always appropriate being suitably natural sounding and adding the perfect amount of weight and presence to each individual scene.
Overall the audio mix provided is fantastic, and really does justice to Michael Giacchino’s wonderfully emotional, BAFTA winning, musical score, every single sound is perfectly represented and brilliantly understated, making for a mix that is thoroughly engaging and excellently fitting.
Extras:
For a children’s film, Up comes with a surprising amount of informative and worthy special features which include two animated shorts; Dug’s Special Mission, which is a short following the misadventures of Dug the talking dog shortly before he meets Carl and Russell in the main film, and one called Partly Cloudy, which is a very cuddly little short about clouds that make babies, and the stork’s that have to carry the children to earth; and a picture in picture video commentary (titled Cine-Explore on the disc) that contains a wealth of animated storyboards, early character renderings and concept art as well as discussions about the complexity of developing the films people and places (making for a wholly absorbing, interesting and informative track that never becomes too boring).
There are also a number of documentaries, including The Many Endings of Muntz; in which the crew talk in great detail about the difficulties they faced in finding a suitable demise for the movie villainous Charles Muntz, and other possible concept endings they had for him, which is very interesting, and once again shows the effort that the people at Pixar go to in order to release a film with the exact tone and message that they want to convey; and a documentary, called Adventure Is Out There, which discusses the films pre-production, design, and development, and contains interviews from the filmmakers, crew and even a few explorers, and is fairly interesting, but more than likely to bore the kids senseless.
Overall it’s a decent selection of extras that are very informative, very interesting, and most importantly never dull; there are possible alternate scenes, a brilliant commentary track, and even a couple of animated shorts that should entertain the kids for a while. It’s a well rounded package that suits the film extremely well, and is even expanded upon further in the special edition with a whole host of other documentaries that discuss everything from studying different pensioner’s wrinkles at an old people’s home (in order to accurately create Carl’s elderly face), the trails involved with creating dogs onscreen (including having to attend lectures on canine psychology), and clips of the animators interacting with live ostriches (in order to get a feel for the films native birds), as well as an extremely interesting short about Michael Giacchino’s score.
The Bottom Line:
Up is everything that audiences worldwide have come to expect from a Disney/Pixar collaboration; it’s technically brilliant, wonderfully colourful, daft, silly and heart-warming all in one, and not only entertaining enough for the kids, but contains some properly adult themes as well; themes that some parents might actually deem inappropriate for young children, who won’t be able to properly understand the ideas of death and bereavement (it’s a little different seeing a real person dying compared to watching a deer croak at the beginning of Bambi).
The picture and audio quality of the Blu-ray are both brilliant, and it comes with extras that are guaranteed to entertain the kids, and give enough background to satisfy the films more adult fans, especially so on the special edition set which does comes with many more special features than the regular combi-pack.
Overall Up is a pretty typical Pixar movie, it starts off brilliantly and rather grown up, but unfortunately fails to hold onto the same level of quality for the majority of the picture, and becomes another guaranteed Pixar classic, that unfortunately doesn’t stand out too far from the likes of WALL.E or Cars, and while it’s definitely going to gain legions of children as fans, and stop their parents from getting too bored (or at least allowing them to have a short nap), there is no way that it will attract any fans that aren’t already fond of the mostly well loved Pixar creations. A solid kids film, with a brilliant score and some rather adult themes, that will probably fade away fairly quickly (in audiences eyes it’ll never reach the cult status of Toy Story), and in no single way deserves its outrageous Oscar nomination.
