Review - UP (in 3D)
Despite one or two comments from people who saw it at the weekend suggesting that I take tissues, I was in no way expecting UP to be one of the saddest films I’ve ever seen.
The story, while fantastic, is pretty straightforward. Old man (former balloon seller at the zoo) faced with being consigned to a retirement home, decides to escape by attaching thousands of helium balloons to his house and flying to to South America. His objective is to follow in the steps of a great explorer he and his now-dead wife had both idolised since childhood and go where they never mangaged to go while she was alive. Along the way he picks up an over-eager boy scout, a talking dog and a strange bird, and perhaps inevitably discovers something about the nature of dreams and making the most of the lives we have.
As an animated movie, it’s right up there with Pixar greats like last year’s Wall-E. As a 3D experience it’s an interesting move - the effects are clever and the 3D is mostly effective, though during some of the more frenetic action sequences it can be hard to keep focus. The characters are generally well drawn (no pun intended), with fun quirks and the story doesn’t always take the easy way - there’s a theme about Russell the scout’s mostly-absent father which could easily have ended on a cop-out and doesn’t, for instance.
It’s been remarked on in many other places, but Doug the talking dog is, frankly, a work of genius. Exactly the opposite of what you’ll expect from a talking dog in a cartoon. And the use of his packmates is brilliantly funny. I couldn’t tell you most of the dialogue in the first scene featuring Alpha, the leader of the pack, because I was laughing too much, and so was the rest of the audience.
But oh dear lord it’s sad. The early sequence showing an entire relationship from childhood to old age and death is better done in animation than I think any number of live action films with actual actors emoting away could have achieved, and at the end of it when a cartoon character is dead you’ll feel the loss. Particularly as it’s a character launched into the film with such incredible energy. The whole film is marbled with a sense of loss and regret, somewhat alleviated towards the end, but still lurking in the back of the audience’s mind. As I left I heard one woman commenting that she’d been “crying her eyes out”.
UP is, in many ways, a small film. It’s about relationships, dreams, loss, and getting by. It’s not one of those animated films, like Wall-E, to take advantage of the medium to go all out for scope, spectacle and big ideas. But even though it’s small, it’s very nearly perfectly formed.