When it comes to Pixar films, we assume by now we’ll get eye-popping computer animation, superior storytelling and hilarious supporting characters. At the same time, we’ve also come to expect the unexpected: You liked a rat who loves to cook? Okay, try a robot that doesn’t speak, cleaning up garbage on an abandoned planet. On Friday afternoon at the Disney theater in Manhattan, Pixar showed off 45 minutes of its May 2009 feature “Up,” and delivered on expectations while once again subverting them.
“It’s an action adventure story staring an old man,” said co-director Pete Docter. The old man in question, Carl, is a septuagenarian widow who channels the grief over his deceased wife into a crazy stunt: tying thousands of balloons onto his house and flying it to South America’s Paradise Falls, which the couple had always dreamed of visiting. The hitch—and the makings of an “Odd Couple”-style buddy comedy—is that a feisty 9-year-old named Russell gets swept along for the ride—a ride that includes dangerous adventures and more than a few run-ins with a kooky cast of secondary characters.
Flying house? Eccentric characters encountered during perilous escapades? If that sounds a bit like “The Wizard of Oz,” Docter and his team noticed it too. In fact, if the filmmakers ever found themselves veering too closely to “Oz” territory, they were quick to pull a U-turn. Among other influences were Disney classics like “Dumbo” and “Lady and the Tramp,” and the films of renowned Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki.
Though its 78-year-old main character—whose look a producer described as “a mix of Walter Matthau, Spencer Tracy and your grandpa”—falls just slightly outside the usual Disney demographic, “Up” itself is, at its core, quite similar to the formula in almost all Pixar flicks: a character is thrust out of his normal life and into a hero’s quest. Looked at in this way, there’s a direct and venerable line extending from that cowboy doll who comes to life, up through that anxious fishy father searching for his son, and straight into suburban Carl pushing his walker through the wilds of Paradise Falls.
Not to say the film is playing it safe. “Up” begins with a black-and-white newsreel and segues into a 7-minute short film—without dialogue and with very few sound effects—that recounts the story of how the young Carl met his wife, Ellie. We watch Ellie find out she cannot become pregnant, we watch as the daily responsibilities and costs of life interfere with their dreams to travel the world, we watch as Ellie ultimately dies, leaving Carl lost and lonely. None of this is sugar coated, and it remains to be seen if kids will be amenable to such real world, often harsh storytelling.
Yet with the success of “WALL-E,” Pixar has proven young moviegoers are more sophisticated than many of us adults realize. The bottom line is Pixar has delivered another rollicking winner. When the screen cut out after the 45 minutes had passed, the crowd let out an audible, frustrated sigh. “Can we see the rest?” someone begged.
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