One of the common criticisms of Pixar’s 2008 offering, Wall-E, was that it began wonderfully and originally, and then turned into slightly more conventional fare. Arguably, this is the case with Up, too; the opening twenty-or-so minutes are perfection, and it’s probably one of the best openings to an animated film I’ve seen. Unfortunately this level of quality isn’t exactly reached, and you could indeed say that the film goes downward.
That’s not to say Up is ever bad. But it ends up with an action-packed finale that feels at odds with what the film originally set out to do.
The story of Carl, an old man desperate for adventure after his wife’s death, is fantastical enough once he propels his house by balloons into the sky. Incredibly, this isn’t in the slightest the weirdest part of the film. As the film continues, we are introduced to an improbably large bird, and dogs intelligent enough to talk through voice devices in their collars. Pixar loves anthropomorphising animals – and they’re really quite good at it – but never before have we been introduced to normal humans first and then shown talking animals. The dogs are very, very funny – particularly the stereotypically villainous one, whose key gimmicky joke never outstays its welcome – but it somehow seems to undercut the human drama of the story.
This may be intentional. When Carl finally lets go of the house and his departed wife, he becomes an action man in a bizarre scene atop a zeppelin. This is symbolic of him throwing away his past and dreams and living in the present instead. But it still jars considerably. Even the villain is quite stock, which is a shame considering that his motivations make perfect sense. He even represents an anti-Carl, another old man desperate to live out his dreams. Yet still, he is conventional. He’s got nothing on Syndrome, the spurned kid who got too big for his shoes (literally and metaphorically).
It’s a shame, too, that Carl is put through so much physical exercise, because it again threatens to destroy the logic of the world Pixar has created, even though it’s animated and artificial. At the beginning of the film, Carl is barely able to walk across his front porch even with his cane. Later he drags an entire house with his body, and, as I already said, becomes an action hero. There’s perseverance, and then there’s impossibility. It’s lucky this is animated, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to suspend my disbelief at all.
The really good bits, though, are indeed really good. I’ve already mentioned the opening, but I want to dwell on this further. It’s an incredibly bittersweet montage that genuinely convinces you that these characters have lived out an entire life, rather than it feeling purely like a montage. As well as that, there’s death. Many children were first introduced to death via Disney’s own Bambi, but this is, despite being quieter about it, even more educational (I struggled to think of another word but couldn’t. I apologise). We not only see death as the end to a life not lived as perhaps it was supposed to have been lived, but we also see death as the end to a life that has barely begun. It’s an incredible depth for Pixar to reach, and so subtly too.
And, for all that he may become a prototype hero towards the end, Carl is genuinely an excellent main character. Apart from immediately disproving that stupid notion that children only like watching children on screen, the character of Carl allows Pixar to examine what old age would be like. And this is what Pixar says it’s like: you spend your days doing very little, save for hanging on desperately to everything you once had, be it your house, a dream you had, or a picture hanging on the wall. Your death doesn’t concern you so much as the thought of losing everything that meant something to you while you were alive. I can imagine a child sitting and watching this, and suddenly feeling what it means to be alive, how precious life truly is. Or, they could be laughing at the funny doggies.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. Despite being a bit uneven, the good by far outweighs the bad, and it is, simply, excellent to see Pixar still willing to push envelopes and do things their own way.
Rating: 
