The Great Gig in the Sky

Rating: 9/10 (5 June 2009)

Last year's Pixar production had the best possible reviews, I remember going to see WALL*E expecting to experience what for many people it was: the very best Pixar film. I loved WALL*E as much as you fellow reader but I don't consider it the very best Pixar film, it is not even one of my 5 favourite Pixar films, hell I haven't felt desires to buy/rent its DVD, I haven't felt desires to watch it for the second time. I just saw Pixar's latest production (in 3-D and it looks, as expected, just wonderful!) Up (Peter Docter directed it being his second Pixar film. His other, the 2001 Monsters Inc., is my second favourite from Pixar) and for me is just as wonderful as WALL*E and Ratatouille (another film I haven't seen since I saw it for the very first time on the big screen back in 2007) but like those two films it is not one of my most favourites from Pixar.
Anyway, the preview I saw of Up didn't allow me (thankfully) to see any characters but only the main ones: the old man Carl Fredricksen (voice of Edward Aisner) and the kid Russell (Jordan Nagai), the preview showed the old man with his floating house and later realizing that he had a guest. But Up actually begins when Carl was younger than Russell, when Carl met Ellie (Elizabeth Docter), the girl that just like him loved adventures, loved exploder Charles Muntz, the girl that eventually became the woman of his life. All of what Carl and Ellie shared is fantastically told, is realistic, touching, is a really great part of the film.
The director Peter Docter said this: "the message of the film is that the real adventure of life is the relationship we have with other people, and it's so easy to lose sight of the things we have and the people that are around us until they're gone. More often than not I don't really realize how lucky I was to have known someone until they're either moved or passed away. So if you can kind of wake up a little bit and go, "Wow, I've got some really cool stuff around me every day", then that's what the movie's about". Ellie passes away, then we move to the present with Carl, the present is still realistic and also sad, no country for old men certainly, the destiny of Carl is to go to a retirement home but then the extraordinary begins, then the dream of Ellie as kid of having her clubhouse in Paradise Falls is the one and only objective of Carl and well Carl will not leave his house and is satisfying as hell!
Like almost everybody I knew that at one point Carl was going to use lots and lots of balloons to make his house fly so for me the "weird" stuff began once Carl and Russell (he is a hilarious character, you will love him and well he being a wilderness explorer was trying to earn the "assisting the elderly" badge ended in Carl's house) arrive to South America, I was like "talking dogs in the middle of the jungle?", this stuff with the dogs is really hilarious. It works like with the elderly (Carl certainly and also Charles Muntz, yes Carl will meet his hero who now owns the bunch of dogs and lives in Paradise Falls just to capture a weird bird that Russell calls Kevin!), I mean on one hand we have the extraordinary: talking dogs, all the amazing movements that Carl and Russell do in the course of the film, the dogs being chefs, etc. And on the other hand we have the realistic moments (apart of those from the beginning of the film, from the story of Carl and Ellie) : the dogs being totally controlled by that who has the ball or the food, the elderly having problems to fight (hilarious scene!), etc. The deal is that the film always works, and well Up is just another triumph for Pixar! 9.5 out of 10