Monday, June 8, 2009

Up

by Bob Clark

Pixar Animation Studios have been on a creative roll lately. After 1995’s revolutionary Toy Story showed the world the technological and artistic possibilities of computer animation, they’ve consistently impressed filmgoers everywhere with their features. While serious competition has popped up from the likes of DreamWorks projects like the moneymaking Shrek series, Pixar has continued to produce hits that satisfy audiences and critics alike with thrills, charm and vision that go beyond celebrity-voices and ever-improving CGI capabilities. Middling efforts like Cars aside, their last string of films has included some of the most impressive animated filmmaking of the past ten years—Brad Bird’s The Incredibles & Ratatouille and Andrew Stanton’s acclaimed Wall-E can easily stand next to the likes of Katsuhiro Otomo’s groundbreaking Akira and the perennially classic movies produced by Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.

Thanks to the efforts of Pixar and chief John Lassater, the reputation of Disney has been restored and the future of American animation made bright and shining clear. Therefore, we can excuse the mild stumble that is Up—an otherwise decent, entertaining and occasionally moving picture that doesn’t quite merit the rapturous praise it’s been receiving so far. Directed by Pete Doctor—whose last effort was the clever Monsters, Inc.— it tells the story of elderly curmudgeon Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) who escapes a dreary life of widowed loneliness and court-imposed retirement with the improbable aid of a rustic old house and several hundred helium-balloons. His home aloft on the wings of adventure across cityscapes, stormy skies and jungle clime, Carl’s quest to deliver his house to the perch of a South American waterfall is an effectively personal one, motivated by his late-wife Ellie’s desire to make the journey herself when they were children.

Had the story been as focused as Carl’s simple, earnest dream, then Up might have been as eloquent as it is ambitious—the animated equivalent of Klaus Kinski’s heroically mad lead in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, performing the Herculean labor of moving an opera-house across the mountaintops. But Doctor and co-director Bob Paterson make the mistake of confusing adventure for mere excitement, and decorate their homespun fable with an abundance of extra characters, locales and conflicts that aim to add emotional tug (a Boy Scout-like tag-along hoping to get a badge for assisting the elderly), a sense of action and danger (a mad explorer who Carl and Ellie idolized in their youth, voiced by Christopher Plummer) or comedic relief (a bevy of dogs with collars that allow them to talk—a joke that’s only as funny as the canine attention span). Before these additions, Up’s story was direct, honest, and light as the balloon-aided house its hero steers; thanks to them, however, it’s weighed down and drags with the extra-baggage of artificial plot-contrivances, artificial thrills and insufferable sentimentality.

It’s part of a whole miscalculation on the part of the Pixar team, and one that’s out of character with last year’s spare, elegant Wall-E. Stanton’s work on that film was a tribute to the potential of animation when taken seriously as an instrument of visual storytelling, owing equal parts to the smart sci-fi satire of Lucas’ THX 1138 and the heartfelt romantic charity of Chaplin’s City Lights. Doctor and Paterson are obviously inspired by many of the same cues, and at times express themselves with an admirable level of conciseness—while the opening ten minutes occasionally smacks irritatingly of Little Rascals tomfoolery and Capra-esque melodrama, it also does a fine job of telling a life-long story with the straightforward clarity of an album of family photos. However, there are moments throughout the film, from start to finish, where the filmmakers plainly overreach themselves and force the story’s emotions, humor and tension instead of letting them speak plainly for themselves.

The film simply tries too hard to gain the sympathies and attention of its audience, something it earns for itself whenever Doctor and Paterson show enough confidence in their material to present their narrative unadorned with such strained histrionics. Still, the film easily eclipses any other animated fare currently vacationing in summer multiplexes. No matter how much about the plot might feel superfluous, it all comes off with the expert craft we’ve all come to expect from a Pixar movie, and it’s highly unlikely that its target audience of children and families will give it anything other than the most ringing of endorsements. Thanks to its odd choice of a septuagenarian protagonist, the film manages to do the unlikely job of telling a persuasive and compelling story about growing-old—something an animated film hasn’t done so well since 1991’s Roujin Z, the Otomo-scripted anime about an elderly-man trapped in a mechanical bed gone berserk in a customarily futuristic Tokyo.

While it might not deserve quite the same recommendations as Wall-E—that rare gem that was just as artistic and compelling as any great live-action fare—Up is easily essential viewing for enthusiasts of quality animation and children of all ages. For any other studio, such tidings would be exemplary. For Pixar, naturally, it’s just par for the course.