So it’s been a long hiatus. Frankly, I can’t remember the last film that I saw that was anywhere remotely compelling enough to think about, let alone write. But trust Pixar to change all that…
It beats me how they do it. Every single time. When I heard the premise for ‘Up’, I thought this was it – that this would be Pixars’s Vista(I’m sorry, I work in a technology company). An old geyser and an enthusiastic kid in an adventure to some exotic land? Now haven’t we heard that story before(like, countless times from the Hollywood stables itself)? I was looking forward to Pixar going 3D, and I thought this, combined with my belief that Pixar can never go altogether bad, would at least make this a worthwhile watch.
Instead, what I got is something akin to a truly ‘enriching’ experience – and coming from a cynic like me, that’s saying something. After a quick(and terribly sweet) introduction to two of the principal characters, Carl and Ellie, there follows a 10 minute sequence that runs, walks and hobbles us through their entire lives without any dialogues, but with a background score so beautiful that calling it magical would be a gross understatement. Well, if you thought Wall•E was good at this stuff, Up makes it look like a warm up act. Heart-warming and heart-breaking at the same time, it made me realize just how far the Disney-Pixar combo has gone beyond simply making people laugh, when I found myself with a lump in my throat and that prickly feeling in my eyes…
What Up offers is true 3D – it adds dollops of that third dimension, depth. This is storytelling at its very best, and the animation is, as we’ve all come to expect, every bit as inspired. It’s never gimmicky or showy in the way most 3D ventures seem to be at the moment – instead, it’s so lovingly realized it almost feels real, and yet a beautiful imagination, all at the same time. Witness the color of the balloons when the house takes flight, or that of a shy Carl’s cheeks when the sassy Ellie takes his hand – the attention to detail is so marvelous that it naturally begets our involvement and care for every story element, including the floating house…
The characters are of course very well etched out, and the humor is never forced – the gags flow naturally and in the course of things, and I think this stems from the confidence that the guys at Pixar have in their stories and their ability to move their audiences, as opposed to the alarmingly common trend nowadays to heap on the gags to fill the vacuums of any emotional impact. Sample the talking dog’s “I’ve just met you, and I love you!” – it’s probably not something that’s going to make you roll on the floor with laughter, but it never fails to make me chuckle whenever I see a dog with a wagging tail nowadays.
However, the character that really stayed with me probably had the briefest appearance – little Ellie sharing her wondrous dreams of adventure, growing into a woman as vivacious as she was boisterous as a child, only to have that vivacity diminished because of a cruel fate, and then the old dreams rekindled, but never realized, until it was too late…. Even with such an envious track record, I think the folks at Pixar will find it hard to ever equal the sheer, heartfelt brilliance that the first 15 minutes of Up alone manage to achieve…