Review Up

When I was little, like most children I loved animation. Animation, unlike live action feature, escorts your mind into the other dimension. All of what you see do not have any counterparts in the real life, as opposed to live action which presents you with on-again off-again journey to the other realm. As a little child, our mind was not a full fledge awareness machine in regard to what is real and what is fantasy. As we grow up, we tend to appreciate reality more because our sense of thought accrues along with our sense of the real world where we live in. But of course that experience as a little one wanting to take a foray into the other dimension to briefly forget all burdens you get to carry over as responsible grownups in your otherwise mundane life is surely not just a good treat. It is plain necessary every once in a while.

After two great films in a row, Ratatouille and Wall-E in two consecutive years, 2007 and 2008, you would be tempted to think that the next feature from Pixar would be nothing but a turndown despite of the title. In the contrary, Up is with no hesitation simply the best compared to the other two, and the best film I have seen so far this year, and it should merit a serious academy award consideration for best picture not just for best animated feature, which I am sure it will win one. It never cease to amaze me how those folks at Pixar keep creating something original, creative, surreal, great and wonderful such as this one. It is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful and magnificent achievement not just in animation industry but in the overall movie making. The movie never fails to amuse me in every scene, the scenes are so ubiquitous notwithstanding. It is in the context of the story, these frames of moving pictures add up to a perfect movie that entertains very exquisitely well from the very beginning to the end. With its Disney Digital 3-D format, the movie has a greater and livelier look.

The story began with a small boy inspired to be a great adventurer befriended a quirky little girl of his age. They would play together and swear that one day in their life to explore the paradise falls in the exotic South America and move their club house there. Then it fast forwarded to times they got married, living life together, when the man worked as a toy balloon vendor and his wife as a zookeeper, saving their money so that one day they will have enough ammunition to fulfill their wildest dream, and finally they got older and the wife’s passing before achieving what they have waited for. This 10-minute non dialog scene was very warm, witty and uplifting simultaneously. Later, the 78-year-old widower live his life on his own and it was not until the conflict between the old man with the contactor company that evicts him out of his own property did he realize that it was a perfect time to revive his long lost dream even without his beloved wife. He then tied thousands of highly pressured Helium gas Balloons to firmly flying his house to travel and begin his adventure. Accompanied by a wilderness explorer boy, who accidentally sneaked up on the porch of the cozy house as it flew sky high, he ventured across the country to South America, hoping he can fulfill his late wife dream moving her clubhouse in Paradise falls. Then the real adventure started for this film, and as he is drawn into this fascinating tour, so are we.

“Up” is not just fun to watch it is sweet and uplifting, it reminds me why I like movie so much. There are a lot of elements to cherish in this film. First and the most significant element is that the story is so simple yet so good and wonderful and very original. Pixar’s animation differs from Dreamworks feature in that they never really need to employ cheesy jokes that ultimately worn me off as in the case of strikingly bad first Madagascar film (2005) which eventually programmed my mind to avoid to see any Dreamworks product unless if it were ‘exceptional’, the information of which I can get from the review and its premise in any online synopsis. Ok, let’s stick to this film, shall we? The second element is they really know how to create embraceable characters that immediately steal the scene, which in this case is a peacock-like giant ostrich with colorful furs that does not even have any single human dialog. But its witty behavior attached itself to all main characters pretty seamlessly and even building a sense of omnipresence to the audience. The third element: they know how to make a comedy, a really funny comedy which in this case revolved around talking and sometime vicious dogs who behave like human with normal human expression. There were several scenes where the dogs laugh and it made me laugh to see how perfect they capture that impossibility as I occasionally wonder why real dogs never laugh. And the last but not the least: they understand the drama element plays an important role to the movie, because when technology behind film industry has advanced so much, movies become more tedious and plain dull when the director recklessly inject a ridiculous amount of spectacularly agonizing mindless scenes (like the case of Transformers) with no real intention to tell the audience a good story.

Back to my original discussion about finding your innocent 8-year-old self every once in a while, the late Walt Disney must had been very proud that the company is able to continue his legacy to entertain and conjure up the world of magic to thousands of audiences around the globe. As you see the opening logo of every Disney pictures zooming out this magical world of wonder emulating Disneyland theme park, combined with a music from “When you wish upon a star” song, you know and realize that they are starting up the process of inviting the inner child inside you to experience the world of magic they have beautifully crafted for 90 minutes or so. But why should you let your inner child enjoy this film more than your current self, when, though little children will surely enjoy “Up”, adults will enjoy it even more?

“Up,” A Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios release, is rated PG for some peril and action. Running time: 90 minutes. Four stars out of four (A)

-Mulyadi Tjoa, Software Developer @ PT Switchlab Indonesia -