Pixar take animation to new heights

Rating: Null/10 (1 July 2009)

Up is fabulous, and I love Pixar. Were it not necessary to submit at least 10 lines to IMDb, I'd leave it at that and leave you groaning at the terrible pun above!
As with WALL-E last year, it's taken an animation studio to give us an object lesson in story-telling and empathy. When did you last see a mass audience film featuring an old person and a boy scout? And enjoy it? Up tells the tale of seventy eight year old Carl who always wanted to travel to South America with his wife Ellie to find their hero the missing explorer Charles Muntz, but life kept getting in the way and Carl and Ellie never made it before Ellie died. With his beloved wife gone, and their home threatened by redevelopment, Carl ties thousands of balloons to the roof, and takes off for South America anyway, taking along an unlikely accidental stowaway, the intrepid scout Russell. Up is the story of their adventures.
The story features a pack of dogs that have been given voice by the wicked Muntz, by way of collars containing technological wizardry. But the dogs are still dogs, not too cutesy, and are interested in doggy things like squirrels. In fact, one of the best gags in the movie is the sound which emanates from the voice box of the most macho hound, the Alpha dog who sounds like a diver on helium. What Pixar are so good at, is eliciting the audience's sympathy for the characters without drenching the movie in the over wrought sentimentality so often used by Disney. We are allowed to listen and observe, and reach our own level of sympathy and empathy, rather than being hit over the head by unbearable cuteness – the dogs being a case in point.
For me, Up is not quite in the same class as WALL-E which I adored, hence my score of nine out of ten rather than ten out of ten, but for script, direction and technical brilliance, it's the best movie I've seen so far in 2009.