Note: There are some spoilers in here, but I would be surprised if anyone reading this has not seen this movie.

I had my suspicions about Up the first time I saw the film, and they were confirmed upon my second viewing—Pixar has made a movie worthy of the great American films.  In an age were the most highly-praised films are characterized by artistic pretension and/or thematic didacticism, Pixar’s latest production is an absolute thrill and a breath of fresh air.  It is a film full of surprises that, most importantly, develops its characters to such a degree most of us never expected possible with animation.

Walking into the theatre, I did not expect this to be perhaps the most tear-jerking movie I have seen in years.  This is not to say Pixar hasn’t made us pull out our handkerchiefs in the past.   Sure, watching Jessie grow irrelevant in the eyes of her maturing owner was pretty tragic in Toy Story 2, and shredding Boo’s door in Monsters Inc. was heartbreaking.  None of this, however, prepared us for the silent montage depicting the shared lives of Carl and Ellie Fredrickson, two lovers bound together by their passion for adventure and each other.  This scene reminds us of the power of the image that is so lost with most movies today.  It communicates such joy and also sorrow with the meticulously animated frames.  The way the images seamlessly flow into one another makes this perhaps the most poetic statement about love in any recent film.  Recall the human emotion that can be seen on Carl’s face when he comforts Ellie after her miscarriage; Pixar has never made anything as moving, and they will never be able to top themselves.

As far as character development goes, Russell is about as sweet yet as realistic as a child character can get.  Nine-year-old Jordan Nagai gives a truly brilliant voice performance as the young Wilderness Explorer in pursuit of his “assisting the elderly” badge.  So often with animated films, the children are merely cute, empty caricatures for the kids in the audience to be able to identify with.  However, with Russell, we have a character so full of depth.  He is so full of joy playing with the “snipe” Kevin and attempting to convince Carl to take the bird along for the trip.  (Want to mention the playfulness in the scene and creativity of the way Russell and Kevin play in the trees.)  Then, there is the sadness in his voice when he talks about his absent father, knowing something is missing in his life but searching for exactly what it is.

This film is not just about a relationship between a man and the son he could never have, or a boy and the father he barely has.  This is a film about four outsiders who come together and are able to change each other’s lives: Carl struggles to adapt to the modern world, still wishing to fulfill his promises of the past; Russell obviously has no stable parental situation; the lovable “talking” dog Dug is a joke amongst the other canines; and Kevin is being hunted down by a pack of vicious dogs.  Each of these characters alone is vulnerable, but together they have a wild, unforgettable adventure, surviving in the face of the greatest dangers.

This movie is full of the sense of adventure Carl and Ellie were always searching for, and by the end of the film, the characters find their places in life, even if it is not where they originally expected.  With a flying house, “talking” dogs, a cane-wielding senior and impossible-to-catch snipes, the movie is hardly conventional, but these traits have exactly the sort of originality and color that is so fun to experience.  The film opens with a young Carl watching an old newsreel of Charles Muntz, reminiscent of the “short” that opens Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane.  Like Kane, Up has a great sense of ambition and never misses a note.  I apologize for the multiple times I have used phrases like “greatest of all time” and “best in years.”  Ultimately, words fall short of describing the joy of watching this movie and knowing such beauty is still possible in mainstream cinema.