This is a beautifully animated film, with lush imagery, a touching score, and a fair sampling of the charming characters and scenarios that we expect from a Pixar film.
But what might have been an easy to digest story about the interaction between a grumpy old man and an ardent child, turns out to be a sobering account of lost relationships, loneliness, and disillusionment.
We meet Carl as a child, when he finds the love of his life, Ellie. Ellie reveals her dream to fly away to Paradise Falls, an ambition that Carl adopts as his own.
The film quickly brings us to an older and lonelier Carl, left with nothing but his house, his memories, and photographs of his late wife. When real estate developers buy the neighborhood around his house, Carl is forced to leave his beloved home. But just before Carl is taken away to a retirement village, he releases an immense bouquet of balloons from his chimney, lifting the house off its property and sending the old man towards Paradise Falls. Carl doesn’t realize that Russell, the enthusiastic wilderness scout, has come along for the ride. After a scene lifted from The Wizard of Oz, the house floats down to an area within a few days hiking distance from his long-held destination.
Carl is burdened by the memory of his wife and their shared, unfulfilled wish to travel to the remote waterfall in South America. The film depicts this with Carl physically pulling his hovering, but slowly sinking house through the jungle.
The wilderness near Paradise Falls turns out to be an unpleasant labyrinth where Carl crosses paths with another dream seeker named Charles Muntz. Muntz was long ago discredited for claiming to find a rare bird in Paradise Falls. But Muntz vows to find the creature alive, and bring it back to civilization. In pursuit of his goal, Muntz loses all ties with human beings, interacting only with his technologically enhanced pack of dogs.
Separate paths bring these two dreamers to Paradise falls. While Carl chooses a mundane life of joys and hardships shared with his love, Ellie, setting aside his dream for another day, Muntz spends his lifetime chasing after an elusive bird, leaving him without love, success, or happiness.
I was partially disappointed when I saw UP, because when I rented the film, I was in the mood to watch something fun. And while the film has its share of witty imagery and glee, UP is essentially a character study of an old man dealing with loss. It depicts his struggle in choosing between turning inward, and allowing himself to connect to others.
But UP also tells us something important about the nature of pursuing dreams. It distills the value of adventures, stripping them of the scenery and circumstance that we imagine will fulfill our deepest wants. The real worth of these adventures is measured by the experience we share with people we love, no matter the setting.
