Up

• 
• |
• 
• |
• |
• 0

No company in recent history has created as much joy as Pixar, and the studio's first 3-D animated film, Up, lives up to the glorious standards set by Monsters Inc., Wall-E, and The Incredibles. Cranky, despondent widower Carl yearns for the adventure he and his wife never had, so he rigs thousands of balloons to his chimney and launches his house off to Paradise Falls, South America. He soon discovers an unwanted stowaway, an eight-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell, and their testy relationship forms the spine of the movie. In Paradise Falls, they end up befriending a monstrous and utterly delightful flightless bird, battling a zeppelin-driving megalomaniacal explorer and his pack of talking dogs, and, of course, learning a little something about love. Like all Pixar movies, Up brilliantly manages the upstairs-downstairs trick of reaching both adults and kids without pandering to either. Carl is perhaps the darkest and most emotionally complex of Pixar's heroes—the movie's instigating events include infertility, death, and Carl's assault conviction—yet the gleeful slapstick of Up (blimp fights! talking dogs chasing tennis balls!) will delight any child. And all age groups will gape at Up's South American landscapes and dreamy balloon-festooned flying house: It's one of the most beautiful movies ever made. Your kids may not notice this, but Up also counters The Incredibles' exceptionalist ideology by concluding that adventure is meaningless and we should instead cherish the mundane, "boring" moments of life.