CINEMA: Up

A 3D CGI animation that deals with such adult and serious issues as the indignities of old age, death, bereavement and loneliness doesn’t really sound like a recipe for success, but Up is – dare I say it – an uplifting and life-affirming film that will play equally well with children and adults.

After the death of his wife, OAP Carl feels he has nothing left to live for, especially as a developer wants to put him into a home so his house can be pulled down to make way for flats and offices. But Carl manages to rally the last of his fighting spirit to whisk the house up into the air with the aid of hundreds of brightly coloured helium-filled balloons in order to make a trip to South America – the trip he and his wife always wanted to make but never managed while she was alive.

Carl’s plan works surprisingly well, until he realises he has a stowaway aboard, young Junior Wilderness Explorer (a bit like the Adventure Scouts) Russell, who luckily has his emergency survival pack with him when Carl takes off. Now the two of them are bound for adventures in the remote Paradise Falls that will see them forming a touching father/son bond and where they will meet strange, speaking dogs, a 13-foot tall bird that was thought extinct and a famous world explorer who has now gone slightly loopy.

As you would expect from a Pixar movie, the attention to detail here is meticulous; from Carl’s knitted vest and tweed breeches to Russell’s knotted kerchief. But it isn’t just the visual style of the film that impresses, it is also the way the characters are fully-formed and given real depth and feeling. When Carl’s wife dies you really feel his pain and loneliness; when Russell tells Carl about how his dad never comes to see him play sport you can see and hear his disappointment and pain. The poignancy of the first half of the movie is lost in the lighter, more jokey second half when they arrive at Paradise Falls, but overall Up is one of the most grown up children’s animations you’ll have ever seen.