Up

Half term means a family trip to the cinema and this Autumn's offering at the local Empire is Pixar's latest film Up. It's the story of Carl Fredericksen (voiced by Ed Asner) who decides to tie thousands of helium filled balloons to his shortly to be demolished house and head for South America.

Well that's the short precis anyway, as with all Pixar films there's something in here for all ages although the first ten minutes of the film could be a little confusing for younger viewers. The film opens with Carl as a small boy at the cinema in the 1930's or 40's watching Movietone News footage of the explorer Charles Muntz return from his adventures only to suffer public disgrace when his latest 'discovery' is revealed to be a fraud. Whilst Muntz goes into exile the young Carl meets Ellie a young girl who has also been bitten by the adventure bug and the next ten minutes of the film shows them as children, married adults, losing their baby and eventually Ellie dies. I sat there watching the widowed Carl in is house thinking "Wow, where do we go from here?"

Whilst this is happening the city around Fredericksen's house is being transformed by what he calls 'hippies.' Fredericksen is about to succumb to the local old people's home when Russell, a local adventure scout, comes calling and explains that he only needs to assist an old person to get his missing Wilderness Explorer badge. Carl sends the willing Russell on a fools errand to find the snipe bird that has been digging up his garden at night and waits for the old folks home bus to arrive. When the bus arrives Carl asks for a couple of minutes alone at which point he releases the thousands of balloons that are in the loft of the house and the house starts to take off, he later discovers that Russell is on the porch having been under the house looking for the snipe when 'lift-off' occurred.

Once they have navigated their way to South America the pair encounter a multi-coloured bird called Kevin (who turns out to be female and has three little Kevin's) and who has a liking for chocolate, the disgraced explorer Muntz and his army of talking dogs and the quest to reach the waterfalls that Carl and Ellie always dreamed of reaching becomes the central part of the middle of the film.

What makes this film stand out from other animations and possibly other films of all genres is that it relies of good old fashioned story telling. The actors voicing the characters are terrific, Christopher Plummer as Charles Muntz has never been so evil and Ed Asner is just brilliant, particularly his exchanges with Russell who has the attention span of a ten year old on Ritalin. The characterisation is first class, there are little things in the animation that make it stand out from the crowd - the body language of Russell, the label hanging out of the back of one characters t-shirt, the expressions of the dogs faces (incidentally the dogs have some of the best lines) and the scenery.

Watching this as an adult it struck me how 'knowing' films aimed at children can be without the children being aware of it, the references to the Lost World (a story by Arthur Conan Doyle), the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the scene in the film where the house is caught up in a storm is straight from Wizard of Oz and the fact that the baddie is called Charles Muntz is an in joke for Disney's hierarchy that is something only anoraks would get.

You come away from this film feeling good. Good about life. If this film does have a message it's that even if the big plans don't work out there is enough joy to be had in the smaller things in life to make it all worthwhile. Pixar have apparently had problems convincing Disney that their films should be more story driven, more adult if you like, animations with emotion rather than just played for laughs. Kids love stories and given that this film is the second highest grossing movie in Pixar's oeuvre I'd say that they are doing the right thing, after all if I can spot the Conan Doyle and Mark Twain references in it there's hope for us all.