Up


Posted on Jun 8, 2009
By Julia Szabo

 

Disney, 2009, 96 minutes

To view the trailer, go here.

 

As current economic indicators are making obvious, sometimes there's no way to go but up. That's one important message of this newest story from the hyper-imaginative minds at Pixar. On the night before he's court-ordered to enter a retirement home, elderly widower Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Ed Asner) pulls a MacGyver, engineering a daring home-made escape by filling his chimney with helium balloons.

This is no aimless trip, however. Carl and his airborne house are bound for Paradise Falls, a mythic place in South America, the dream destination of his late wife and childhood sweetheart Ellie - and the actual home base of Carl and Ellie's childhood hero, explorer-aviator Charles Muntz. That name echoes a cross between Charles Lindbergh and Madman Mundt from the Coen brothers' "Barton Fink," and deliberately so (his voice is provided by Christopher Plummer). Other cinematic references include "It's a Wonderful Life," "The Red Balloon," "The Incredibles" (another Pixar masterpeice), and of course, "The Wizard of Oz."

Carl and Ellie never had a dog, but Muntz is a dog lover, so we get to see lots of K9 action throughout this excellent adventure. Lovers of dogs with "dangerous" reputations (this reporter included) might fume at first to see that the leader of the dog gang prowling this South American eden is Alpha, a talking, snarling Doberman voiced by Delroy Lindo and portrayed as a ferocious bully, whose backup includes a Rottweiler named Beta, a Bulldog called Gamma, and enough Pit Bulls to populate Best Friends Animal Society's Dogtown twice over, plus one foolhardy, flop-eared mutt named Dug who emerges to save the day, as so many movie mutts do.

All the dogs in this movie talk, thanks to high-tech dog collars that translate their thoughts into perfect English, with individual inflections so nobody sounds like a Stepford dog (and when Alpha's collar malfunctions, his deep growl is transformed into the comically high-pitched squeak of a cartoon chipmunk). Just when I was beginning to think that Pixar had let down my kind of dog - the tough-looking-but-tender kind - by perpetuating negative K9 stereotypes, I was pleasantly surprised by the movie's resolution (even though I couldn't help wishing that the dog who saves the day had been one of Muntz's mean-looking-but-sweet Pit Bulls instead).

True to its title, this movie begins and ends on an up beat for everyone involved, dogs included. As we've seen before with the Michael Vick scandal, "Up" reminds us that "dangerous" dogs are not naughty by nature or inherently mean; they merely want to please their owners. And when a few good humans come to their rescue and re-program them, a happy ending is indeed possible for all.


 

 

Presence of dogs: reelreelreel
Respect for dogs: reelreelreelreel
Canine star quality: reelreelreelreel
Family friendly:

reelreelreelreel

 
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