Pixar, a company started by George Lucas, has been responsible for some amazing pieces of computer animated features including the Toy Story trilogy, The Incredibles, and Wall-E. In their most recent DVD & Blu-ray release, Up, they push the boundaries of computer animation once more and combine it with their usual great story telling to produce another instant classic.
The film starts with a young boy, Carl Fredricksen, in a cinema watching a black and white documentary about his favourite hero, the adventurer Charles F. Muntz who was renowned for his exploits in South America but was shamed after accusations of forging a skeleton. On his way home he stumbles across a run-down house where he meets another Muntz fan called Ellie. The two of them make a promise to one day fly to Paradise Falls and it is then that Carl falls in love with her.
Time then moves quickly and we see that the couple marry and move into the house where they met after renovating the place. We also see their chance for a family taken away from them and their hopes of going adventuring to Paradise Falls slipping further and further out of reach. Eventually we seem them as an elderly couple, having never fulfilled their dreams of going to Paradise Falls. One day Carl buys plane tickets to go there but before he can show Ellie the tickets she collapses and is taken to the hospital. After giving Carl her "Adventure" book Ellie passes away, leaving Carl on his own once more.
I think this sequence is incredibly powerful at giving an insight into why Carl seems so sad and why he's keeping the world out of his life and doesn't want to move on - he misses his wife and the times they had together. The sense I got of the character at this point is he's given up on life, he's just keeping to himself and is waiting to die. Every time he steps he steps out his front door he is confronted by the world changing around him and business men wanting to tear down his beloved house to make way for new impersonal skyscrapers. When his postbox is accidentally knocked down he becomes distraught and in trying to protect it accidentally hits one of the workers on the head. After some court proceedings he is advised to take up residence at care home for the elderly.
Still determined to not leave his home behind he comes up with a plan to avoid the care home and attaches an amazing number of helium filled balloons to his house so that it can take off. Not long after take off he finds that the Wilderness Explorer who had pestered him earlier was on the porch. Intending on letting him go Carl starts to free some of the balloons so that he can be dropped off but they encounter a storm which causes Carl's belongings to become endangered.
We then see Carl wake up to find that he'd fallen asleep after tying his belongings down, and the Wilderness Explorer named Russell had steered the house to South America. They start to descend but hit ground too early due to some unexpected cliffs and they both end up falling out of the house and cling on to it by a hose pipe to stop it floating away. When the clouds clear they realise they are at Paradise Falls and Carl decides to accept Russell's help to walk the house round to the waterfall to fulfil Ellie's dream.
On the way through the jungle they come across a strange bird (which Russell names Kevin despite it being a girl) which is the same as the skeleton that Muntz was ridiculed for, and a talking dog named Dug. These two join up with them at the annoyance of Carl who just wants to be left alone, and despite several attempts to get rid of them still finds himself stuck with them. Eventually they wake up to find Kevin gone, and they are surrounded by more talking dogs who take them to their leader. It turns out the leader is Muntz (no surprise there really, it was to be expected) though he doesn't really look old enough considering the age difference between them at the start of the film.
Muntz takes them into his airship, the Spirit of Adventure where the dogs serve them lunch and Muntz talks of his desire to capture the bird to end his years in exile and how many people have tried to "cheat" him out of this. At this point it is so obvious he's bordering on your stereotypical villain who has lost sight of his original goal and now puts it before all else. It's an archetype which is seen in many films including the role of Anakin Skywalker during Revenge of the Sith - but obviously in this case it isn't so serious. Muntz starts to believe that Carl is planning the same and sends the dogs after him, but Kevin and Dug help them escape, injuring Kevin's leg in the process.
After seeing how two animals he'd treated badly still wanted to help him, Carl starts to warm to them and agrees to take the injured Kevin to see her young. On the way however Muntz catches up with him in his airship and catches Kevin in a net. Here Carl is faced with what for him was an impossible dilemma - does he save Kevin who saved his life earlier, or does he save his home (which has now been set on fire) and risk losing everything in there which belonged to him and Ellie and his memories of her. For Carl there was no choice, he couldn't bear to lose his memories of Ellie and decides to save his some instead, making Russell feel betrayed as Kevin is captured. I can't really fault Carl's choice here, he's faced with losing everything and he made the only decision he knew how to make; soon he realises there's more to life than your past.
Finally dragging the house to the Paradise Falls he relaxes in his chair and starts to look through Ellie's Adventure scrapbook, but he notices the pages which had been left blank for their planned adventure had been filled with photos of their life together and ended with a message from his wife thanking him for the adventure they shared together and telling him to have another adventure. I think that's quite a sad moment in the film, but it wakes Carl up to realise the importance of his new friends and the adventure they're having. He rushes out of the house to find Russell flying away on some balloons, and so in a desperate attempt to follow he empties the house of all furniture so the house flies once more.
Without going into too much more detail Carl fights Muntz onboard the airship and eventually loses the house at the same time as Muntz falls to his death leaving the airship and the dogs for him to control as they head home. We then see during the credits that this adventure with his new friends has taken Carl out of his shell and he's no longer closed off to the world - he is living his life once more.
I thought this was an incredibly enjoyable film with great animation and a great story, Pixar have really outdone themselves this time. One thing which is good about the Blu-ray release is that it comes with a DVD version also so if you're not yet ready to switch to Blu-ray it means you can have the film in both formats ready for when you do.
