Eye Candy #65 - "Up"

Up: Pixar may be the only movie house on the planet that actually improves with each picture. So many are out there these days, regurgitating ideas and distributing low quality hooey someone else paid for, but with Pixar, every time we get a new film from them, the bar goes up. I’ve said before that I felt that “Wall-E” was Pixar growing up. “Up” is Pixar melding the technology and craft of “Wall-E” with the whimsy of “Monsters Inc.” and doing so brilliantly. Seventy-something Carl Frederickson (Ed Asner, who I coulda sworn was dead) decides to realize a dream of his late wife by moving their entire house to Paradise Falls, in South America, following in the footsteps of their childhood idol, explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), who disappeared with his dirigible many years ago in the same area. To do so, he attaches his house to thousands and thousands of large balloons to fly it all the way down there. Unfortunately he has a stowaway - young Wilderness Explorer Russell, who is just trying to earn his “Assist the Elderly” merit badge. However, once in South America, hijinks ensue with the local flora and fauna, and they run afoul of the Howard Hughes-like Muntz and his army of dogs. We get some fairly deep themes within minutes of the opening, including death and loss, but done with a poignancy I’ve never seen in another film, much less a kid’s movie (though to call Pixar movies “kids movies“ does them a disservice). And it’s suitably funny to balance that poignancy, with the help of a group of dogs with speaker-collars that tell their thoughts, no matter how random. The voice talent is solid. The story, which at the outset seemed light, works well. And the animation here…just spectacular. Loved it. Woodchuck sez, “Come for the popcorn, but stay for the textures and colors.”