Up, Blu-ray – 4-Disc Combo Pack (2009)
Director: Pete Docter
Voices: Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer
Studio: Pixar/Disney 101700 [Release date: 11/10/09]
Video: 1.78:1 for 16:9 color 1080p HD on 2 Blu-rays (plus 1 16:9 DVD & 2 Digital Copy disc)
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 & 2.0; French & Spanish DD 5.1
Subtitles: French, Spanish
Extras: “Dug’s Special Mission,” “Partly Cloudy” theatrical short, “Cine-Explore,” “The Many Endings of Muntz” – alternate scenes, Global Guardian Badge Game, “Married Life,” “8 All-New Documentaries,” DVD of feature + bonus features, DisneyFile Digital Copy disc
Length: 96 minutes (feature)
Rating: *****
Pixar just cannot seem to make a loser animated feature. This one is just as good as their wonderful Wall-E but more real-life-oriented and thus will probably appeal to even more people. The fantasy takes a lot of familiar elements and puts them together in clever ways that have a very wide emotional appeal and plenty of depth too – unlike most such family animated features. Docter was the director of Monsters, Inc., and in Up he has created an even more spirited adventure that hits all the right notes and never lets up.
It begins with the child Carl watching a newsreel about a great adventurer. Then he runs into Ellie, a kookie little girl his age who is also a would-be adventurer. It quickly moves thru their lives together as he eventually marries her and they live a happy life, though shadowed by her inability to have children and their never taking off on their fantasy trip to South America for adventure. Then Ellie dies and the old house they renovated is threatened by industrial development all around it, with 78-year-old Carl forced to move to a rest home.
When the orderlies come to take him away he unleashes thousands of helium balloons (he had made his living as a balloon seller) which lift his house into the sky. He takes off finally on his grand adventure to a tall waterfall in the South America jungle. On the way he finds he is not alone, but joined by a stowaway – a plump little Scout-type named Russell, who wants to gain his one remaining Merit Badge for Assisting an Old Person. The unlikely pair do reach the area of the spectacular waterfall and meet Kevin, a 13-foot-high emu-like bird, Dug, a super-friendly dog, and a famous explorer idolized by Carl in his youth. The explorer also has many trained dogs serving him, for whom he has made special collars which enable them to speak. At first Carl and Russell are treated lavishly aboard the explorer’s dirigible, but when he learns that they have the giant bird he has been hunting all his time there, he turns into the villain of the story. Then the action really gets underway, with Carl and Russell subjected to all sorts of peril, but ending up on top of course.
The voices are perfect for the characters, although the humorous high voice for the Alpha dog is almost unintelligible. The script is again written to appeal to kids and adults equally well, as it tells its somewhat bittersweet tale of love and loss. There are loads of clever little references thruout the film, such as Carl and Russell sitting on a curb eating ice cream and counting passing red and blue cars, respectively, while Dug the dog is counting grey cars. The many bonus features on both the feature film Blu-ray disc and the second bonus disc are of interest if you have the time for all of them, and it is most welcome that they are all hi-def for a change, plus coming with 5.1 surround tracks. The Pixar short Partly Cloudy – as shown in the theaters – is here provided as one of the many extras. It seems to me that as easy as Disney makes it by including the fourth digital copy disc, watching Up on a tiny portable screen or laptop would be the farthest departure you could possibly imagine from the superb 3D theatrical experience.
– John Sunier
