Leeling
Up is a definite tear-jerker, which is quite unusual for an animated feature, even within the first 10 minutes of the film. Carl Fredricksen is a 78-year-old who, together with his late wife, had a dream nearly as old as he is: to go to the Venezuelan wilderness and have a house next to Paradise Falls, a magnificent waterfall.
Right at the beginning of the film, we ‘grow old’ with Carl through the series of flashbacks throughout Carl’s and his wife Ellie’s lives, ending with Ellie’s funeral. The build-up to the main story of how Carl and Ellie remember their childhood dream and try in vain to save up for it seems very similar and hence relatable to many of life’s real struggles to achieve any ambition. This makes it the most emotional story Pixar has ever done in animation next to Finding Nemo and the audience can really sympathise with Carl as he faces the loss of both his unborn child and his wife.
The fantasy begins as Carl decides to fly his house to Venezuela with balloons and finds a stowaway, Russell, a boy scout who had showed up on his doorstep trying to earn his “assisting the elderly” badge. The interaction between the retired balloon salesman and Russell, 8, is very heart-warming, it seems more like the relationship between grandfather and grandson than strangers given how Carl tries to look out for and comfort Russell, all while maintaining a gruff façade, think Walter Matthau. The animation makes the characters cute and charming with the oversized-head-on-small-body formula and, when you incorporate the expressive and convincing voice-acting of acting veterans like Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer, brings them to life so you forgot that you’re watching an animation in the first place and get thoroughly engrossed with the original, if far-fetched, story.
Pixar still manages to pull through with its wonderful animation from the shine of the thousands of balloons to the tip of a feather on a bird without losing any of its wonderful character development in the movie. Even the animation of Dug and all the other dogs are lifelike and their personalities and idiosyncrasies will melt every dog lover to goo within seconds.
The whole story pulls you in from start to end with both light-hearted comedic moments (my favourites are Alpha getting a high voice and being distracted by a squirrel and Kevin the female bird imitating Carl) and bittersweet ones, such as when Carl is constantly reminded of his late wife and talks to her picture or even to the house.
For a family movie, it was surprising to see the degree of reality in what’s supposed to be a fantasy and to sum it up, Up is truly a movie you don’t want to miss. For me, it was an “Awww…man” moment when it ended.