GOing to the Movies

Up - Animation is often treated as a red headed stepchild when it comes to movies. Dismissed as a tool for engaging children, many adults refuse to see movies that contain animation, tagging them as “cartoons.”

Since 1995, Pixar Animation, in partnership with Walt Disney studios, has made lifted animation to a high art. From Toy Story and Monsters, inc. to The Incredible and WALL.E, their films have delighted and touched viewers of all ages. Their tenth collaboration, Up, is another superior film, one that will charm everyone.

The story begins in the 1930’s, where a lonely young boy named Carl meets a spunky girl named Ellie. Both fans of legendary explorer/adventurer Charles Muntz, the dream of adventures in far away, the children become fast friends, later sweethearts and eventually marry.

Though they never quite go on the adventures they dreamt of, their life together is full and rich. When Ellie passes away, Carl, now 78, is left with a house full of memories and dreams gone unrealized.

The couple’s house stands in the way of a high-rise being built and a developer who is desperate to get the land. A misunderstanding seems to open the door to pushing the old man into assisted living. But Carl is a resourceful man and on the day he’s supposed to depart his home for the last time, he takes the house with him.

Utilizing his past as a balloon salesman, Carl attaches thousands of balloons to his home for one last trip, one that he and Ellie planned since they were children. Carl soon learns he has an unexpected passenger. Russell is a neighborhood kid, a Wilderness Ranger, trying to earn the last of his merit badges, for assisting the elderly.

Accidentally, he was swept up when the house lifted off, Russell and Carl become reluctant allies on an adventure beyond their wildest dreams.

Directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, who also worked on WALL.E and Monsters, Inc., have crafted a layered story that speaks to audiences of multiple generations with simple, universal elements. Peterson’s imaginative screenplay expertly mixes humor with pathos, touching with sensitivity and subtlety on themes like divorce and death in ways that never talk down to young viewers, or any viewers, for that matter.

Their visuals are bright and colorful, with plenty of large and small delights to catch and keep your eye. An early montage, utilizing no dialogue, just music and images, brilliantly advances the story while striking just the right moods and notes. As usual in a Pixar film, the voice casting is spot on.

Ed Asner (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant) invests the adult Carl with a feisty charm that immediately enders him to you. Making his voice acting debut, Jordan Maugai accomplishes the toughest trick for child actors, sounding like a real kid, not a kid acting the role of a kid. Peterson adds to his fine writing and direction with sparking voice work as Dug, the talking dog and the villainous Alpha (trust me, you’ll be talking about both characters long after the movie’s over.)

An excellent family film, Up, is without a doubt, one of the best films you’re likely to see this year. This is cinematic storytelling at its very best. Gather together all the movie lovers you know and go see this wonderful animated tale. This is not your father’s-or anybody’s-“cartoon.” MPAA Rating: PG for brief action and child in peril moments. Joe’s Rating: Four (****) Stars.

Also opening May 29:
Drag Me to Hell- Director Sam Rami (Evil Dead, Spider-Man 1/2/3) wastes his time-and yours-with this supposedly nostalgic trip back to his early, low budget horror roots. Alison Lohman (Matchstick Men) serves as Rami’s filmic punching bag as an innocent loan officer in an L.A. bank who has a cursed placed on her by an elderly gypsy when she falls behind ion her mortgage and is about to be evicted. An evil spirit will take the young woman’s soul to Hell in three days unless the curse is passed to someone else.

The problem here is that Rami refuses to play fair. The script (written by Rami and his brother Ivan) is lazy and full of holes. It violates its own internal logic and can’t seem to make up its mind if it wants to be a spoof or a serious fright fest. It apes scenes from other films, including Carrie, while telegraphing its alleged “twist” ending way in advance. After the shoddy way the film deals with Lohman, the ending feels like a cheat.

Rami seemed to rise above the lowbrow carnage of Evil Dead with the cleverness of Army of Darkness and Darkman. The first two parts of his Spider-Man trilogy were classy pop culture moviemaking at a high level. Drag is just that, a real dag of a flick that resembles the work of a beginner, not an established talent. To quote Bette Davis a dame who knew a thing or two about a good horror movie, ‘what a dump!” MPAA Rating: PG-13 for profanity, violence and horror related images. Joe’s Rating: One (*) Star.

Joe Barber’s entertainment reports and reviews can be heard Fridays through Sundays on the WTOP-FM Radio Network (103.5,103.9, 107.7 & Wtop.com) He can be seen regularly on WETA-TV’s Around Town and Fridays on Comcast Sports Net’s Washington Post Live.