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When I first saw the trailer for this movie I was skeptical and largely disappointed. The next effort from the rarely bad Disney/Pixar combo was going to be a straight out of the box campy movie about a man and his flying house and a little boy sidekick? I was even more disappointed and significantly confused when I found out that UP would be opening the Cannes Film Festival this year. That said, in light of what an abysmal movie Mosters vs. Aliens was, the last 3D animated movie to come out this year, I trucked out this weekend to see if Pixar could do any better. Not only have they done better, but I think they’ve reached a new high in animation. From both a story and a technical perspective UP succeeds on almost every level, creating a touching and wonderful story the likes of which I haven’t seen in animation for a very long time.

The story of UP is actually quite complex, well beyond that which you see in the trailer. The problem is that getting into the theatre and being surprised by what you see is so much of the fun of this movie that I can really only give you the bare bones of the story that you probably already know. Carl is an old man and like many old men in the movies he wants to be left alone. A boy named Russell, a Wilderness Scout, comes to knock on his door attempting to get his “Assisting the Elderly” badge in order to become a Senior Wilderness Scout. After sending him off to look for a bird that doesn’t exist Carl had a particularly bad day, which results in his decision to take his house to South America in search of a childhood dream with the assistance of hundreds of helium balloons. Carl soon discovers that this journey is not going to be quite what he had always hoped for, riddled with problems and things he never thought of, not the least of which is the fact that Russell happened to be looking for the fictional bird under his porch at the moment the house took off and has tagged along for the journey.

Pixar has built their empire on the foundation of brilliant stroytelling, but in this case they have reached a new high. So much of this movie is about relationships, friendships, life and the people we love. Believe me I didn’t intend to sit in a theatre this weekend and ball my eyes out at a children’s movie. But that’s the most interesting thing about this movie for me – it’s not really for children. It’s been long said that an animated movie needs to be made so that children can enjoy it, but it also needs to be made for the adults that go with them. Often this results in jokes that both groups can understand, often the same joke on two levels. In this case though I think the pendullum has swungback the other way. I think Pixar has made a movie for adults that kids can enjoy too. There are number of signficantly adult situations (that’s simply adult, not XXX) that present themselves in this movie, the subject of many surprised me very significantly. Certainly the children in the theatre I was in were just as riveted, but it was easy to see that this movie was really made for adults. With much meditation on what it means to love people and what the people in our lives mean to us, the movie also delves into the attachment we have to the things that remind us of those people who are important to us. This movie is about dreams and hopes and what happens to them along the road in life. It’s about disappointments and great successes. It’s an animated movie that is actually about something. It’s just so very, very refreshing.

I do need to give a nod to Dug the Dog though. In Dug they’ve found a brand new kind of sidekick, a Golden Labrador Retriever who has a special collar that allows him to speak. Dug has a number of facets to him that make him far from the average sidekick, which is a welcome distraction. My main concern about this movie was the return of the devastating Disney act three turn. There is a moment in all of the older Disney movies in which something so horrible and devastating happens to the characters that the audience believes that there’s nowhere for them to go. When I was younger I was very leery of this moment because it always hit me very hard. As a result I balled my way through most of the movies that are considered the “classics” of Disney and refuse to watch them again, because their effect on me as a child was so powerful. UP has returned to this moment with such a vengeance that it made me sad not only for what was actually happening but also for the kids in the theatre. That said, I’m also not completely certain that the children in the audience of this movive will completely understand the events of the turn, thus not having the same emotional impact. I do not beleive that we should dum everything down to the level of say, Monsters vs Aliens, but I also think that Disney/Pixar had done a great deal to move away from this moment in thier movies, allowing for, in my opinion, better storytelling. It does worry me for the future, however.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I really loved this movie, and you will too. In fact, despite how horrible I felt in that moment, it is likely the incredible way in which I emotionally connected to the movie that’s the reason I enjoyed myself so much. UP is a brilliant and incredible success by Pixar and I really can’t wait to see what’s next.