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"Up" is a wonderful film, with characters who are as believable as any characters can be who spend much of their time floating above the rain forests of Venezuela. They have tempers, problems and obsessions. They are cute and goofy, but they aren't cute in the treacly way of little cartoon animals. They're cute in the human way of the animation master Hayao Miyazaki . Two of the three central characters are cranky old men, which is a wonder in this youth-obsessed era. "Up" doesn't think all heroes must be young or sweet, although the third important character is a nervy kid.

This is another masterwork from Pixar, which is leading the charge in modern animation. The movie was directed by Pete Docter , who also directed " Monsters, Inc. ," wrote " Toy Story " and was a co-writer on "WALL-E" before leaving to devote full time to this project. So Docter's one of the leading artists of this latest renaissance of animation.

The movie will be shown in 3-D in some theaters, about which I will say nothing, except to advise you to save the extra money and see it in 2-D. One of the film's qualities that is likely to be diminished by 3-D is its subtle and beautiful color palette. "Up," like " Finding Nemo ," "Toy Story," " Shrek " and " The Lion King ," uses colors in a way particularly suited to its content.

"Up" tells a story as tickling to the imagination as the magical animated films of my childhood, when I naively thought that because their colors were brighter, their character outlines more defined and their plots simpler, they were actually more realistic than regular films.

It begins with a romance as sweet and lovely as any I can recall in feature animation. Two children named Carl and Ellie meet and discover they share the same dream of someday being explorers. In newsreels, they see the exploits of a daring adventurer named Charles Muntz ( Christopher Plummer ), who uses his gigantic airship to explore a lost world on a plateau in Venezuela and then bring back the bones of fantastic creatures previously unknown to man. When his discoveries are accused of being faked, he flies off enraged to South America again, vowing to bring back living creatures to prove his claims.

Nothing is heard from him for years. Ellie and Carl ( Edward Asner ) grow up, have a courtship, marry, buy a ramshackle house and turn it into their dream home, are happy together and grow old. This process is silent, except for music (the elder Ellie doesn't even have a voice credit). It's shown by Docter in a lovely sequence, without dialogue, that deals with the life experience in a way that is almost never found in family animation. The lovebirds save their loose change in a gallon jug intended to finance their trip to the legendary Paradise Falls, but real life gets in the way: flat tires, home repairs, medical bills. Then they make a heartbreaking discovery. This interlude is poetic and touching.

The focus of the film is on Carl's life after Ellie. He becomes a recluse, holds out against the world, keeps his home as a memorial, talks to the absent Ellie. One day he decides to pack up and fly away -- literally. Having worked all his life as a balloon man, he has the equipment on hand to suspend the house from countless helium-filled balloons and fulfill his dream of seeking Paradise Falls. What he wasn't counting on was an inadvertent stowaway, Russell ( Jordan Nagai ), a dutiful Wilderness Explorer Scout, who looks Asian American.

What they find at Paradise Falls and what happens there I will not say. But I will describe Charles Muntz's gigantic airship that is hovering there. It's a triumph of design, and perhaps owes its inspiration, though not its appearance, to Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky." The exterior is nothing special: a really big zeppelin. But the interior is one of those movie spaces you have the feeling you'll remember.

With vast inside spaces, the airship is outfitted like a great ocean liner from the golden age, with a stately dining room, long corridors, a display space rivaling the Natural History Museum and an attic spacious enough to harbor fighter planes. Muntz, who must be a centenarian by now, is hale, hearty and mean, his solitary life shared only by robotic dogs.

The adventures on the jungle plateau are satisfying in a Mummy/Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones sort of way. But they aren't the whole point of the film. This isn't a movie like " Monsters vs. Aliens ," which is mostly just frenetic action. There are stakes here, and personalities involved, and two old men battling for meaning in their lives. And a kid who, for once, isn't smarter than all the adults. And a loyal dog. And an animal sidekick. And always that house and those balloons.

A longer version is here: http://blogs.suntimes.com/eber...

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Rated PG for some peril and action.

Edward Asner as Carl

Jordan Nagai as Russell

Christopher Plummer as Muntz

Bob Peterson as Dug

Delroy Lindo as Beta

Jerome Raft as Gamma

John Ratzenberger as Tom

Pete Docter

Co-director

Bob Peterson

Writer (story by)

Tom McCarthy

Cinematographer

Patrick Lin
Kevin Nolting
Michael Giacchino

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Common sense media reviewers.

Pixar's stunning adventure is an upper for everyone.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Meant to entertain, but might inspire an interest

Carl and Russell become good friends and teach eac

Strong role models for multi-generational friendsh

There's some mild peril from thunderstorms hitting

This movie is part of the Disney-Pixar dynasty, wi

Two adults drink out of champagne flutes.

Educational Value

Meant to entertain, but might inspire an interest in travel and adventure.

Positive Messages

Carl and Russell become good friends and teach each other about responsibility, caring for nature, and the movie's main theme about "the spirit of adventure." Loyalty, grit, teamwork, and creative thinking are also themes.

Positive Role Models

Strong role models for multi-generational friendship and a successful marriage. Young Ellie befriends an otherwise lonely young Carl; they become best friends and later a married couple. He takes care of her after she grows ill, and he embarks on a journey to fulfill a lifelong dream of theirs. Russell is a spunky, determined kid. Characters demonstrate integrity, empathy, and gratitude.

Violence & Scariness

There's some mild peril from thunderstorms hitting the house, and a sad sequence that shows Ellie sick in the hospital and then Carl in a funeral home, surrounded by flowers. Both a real gun and a tranquilizer gun are fired at various characters. A house gets set on fire. Younger kids might be scared by some 3-D images that jump at them from the screen, as well as Muntz' dogs, which sometimes appear seemingly out of nowhere, growling and angry. Muntz tries to get rid of Carl and Russell, even if it means trying to kill them. One character falls to his death.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

This movie is part of the Disney-Pixar dynasty, with merchandise and other marketing tie-ins associated with the film.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Up is the second Pixar movie (after The Incredibles ) to receive a PG rating, mostly due to a few potentially frightening scenes involving a band of trained talking dogs trying to get rid of the protagonists, some moments where characters almost fall from a floating house, and some guns firing. That said, it's Disney/Pixar, so the violence is mild. Viewers should note that an early wordless sequence follows an emotional and potentially upsetting trajectory that could trigger questions about old age, illness, and death. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parents say (248)
Kids say (263)

Based on 248 parent reviews

Very sad and emotionally intense

Might be intense for younger children, what's the story.

In UP, septuagenarian Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner ) and his wife Ellie had a shared dream since childhood: to visit exotic Paradise Falls in South America, a place the once-famous explorer Charles Muntz ( Christopher Plummer ) claimed was the most beautiful in the world. After Ellie dies, Carl decides to make his beloved late wife's dream come true and unveils hundreds of helium balloons to fly his house to Paradise Falls. Unbeknownst to Carl, a young Wildlife Explorer scout named Russell (Justin Nagai) is along for the ride. When they finally arrive, the odd couple discovers that Muntz is more interested in killing an elusive rare bird than living in paradise.

Is It Any Good?

Pixar has brought to life a multi-generational odd couple in a film that's visually stunning, surprisingly touching, and unsurprisingly delightful. After nine films, Pixar's legend is well known; it's the only studio with a perfect record both commercially (each of its releases has grossed more than $150 million) and critically. Up is no exception on the latter front, and considering the demand for family entertainment, it's sure to be a big hit money-wise, too.

The beginning of the film is an unexpected tearjerker following the entire marriage -- from first sight to widowhood -- of adventurous-at-heart Carl and Ellie Fredricksen. But he bulk of the story, as the trailer promises, is Carl and Russell's amazing skyward journey to Paradise Falls. Above the gorgeous and colorful animated vistas, Pixar's astonishing achievement is the sweet, funny, lasting relationship that it's odd-couple heroes share.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Up 's central relationship between Carl and Russell. What does the movie have to say about multigenerational friendships? What does a young boy teach an elderly man, and vice versa?

Kids: What kind of adventures do you dream of having? Does an adventure need to be somewhere far away?

How do the characters in Up demonstrate empathy and teamwork ? What about integrity and gratitude ? Why are these important character strengths ?

Movie Details

In theaters : May 29, 2009
On DVD or streaming : November 10, 2009
Cast : Christopher Plummer , Ed Asner , Jordan Nagai
Director : Pete Docter
Studio : Pixar Animation Studios
Genre : Family and Kids
Topics : Adventures , Friendship , Great Boy Role Models
Character Strengths : Empathy , Gratitude , Integrity , Teamwork
Run time : 98 minutes
MPAA rating : PG
MPAA explanation : some peril and action
Last updated : February 25, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘up’: film review.

Winsome, touching and arguably the funniest Pixar effort ever, the gorgeously rendered, high-flying adventure is a tidy 90-minute distillation of all the signature touches that came before it.

By Michael Rechtshaffen

Michael Rechtshaffen

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Given the inherent three-dimensional quality evident in Pixar’s cutting-edge output, the fact that the studio’s 10th animated film is the first to be presented in digital 3-D wouldn’t seem to be particularly groundbreaking in and of itself.

But what gives Up such a joyously buoyant lift is the refreshingly nongimmicky way in which the process has been incorporated into the big picture — and what a wonderful big picture it is.

The Bottom Line Winsome, touching and arguably the funniest Pixar effort ever, the gorgeously rendered, high-flying adventure is a tidy 90-minute distillation of all the signature touches that came before it.

It’s also the ideal choice to serve as the first animated feature ever to open the Festival de Cannes, considering the way it also pays fond homage to cinema’s past, touching upon the works of Chaplin and Hitchcock, not to mention aspects of It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz and, more recently, About Schmidt .

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Superb animation turns Disney’s tale of a grumpy old man and plump little boy into a touching and exciting flight of fancy

T he first golden age of Hollywood animation occurred in the late 1930s and early 40s when Walt Disney produced a succession of feature-length masterpieces beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and continuing with Pinocchio and Bambi . Then, in 1992, Beauty and the Beast , the best Disney cartoon for half a century, ushered in a second golden age.This has reached new artistic heights through the work of the Pixar company which became part of the Disney organisation, made necessary the creation of an Academy Award for best feature-length animated film and has helped give computers a good name. It's latest production, Up , made in 3D, is co-directed by Pete Docter and Bob Petersen, who have worked on most Pixar productions including both Toy Story films. It's one of its best: touching, funny and graphically exciting.

Pixar offers exceptional value, invariably opening with a dazzling short and closing with final credits that keep popular audiences (though not, I'm sad to say, film critics) sitting in their seats to the very end. Its last film, Wall-E , for instance, which Docter scripted, was preceded by Presto , a brilliantly frenetic five-minute cartoon directed by Douglas Sweetland, in which an Edwardian music hall magician is challenged by his fiendishly rebellious assistant, the rabbit Alec Kazam. I was almost exhausted with laughter and in need of a rest before Wall-E even started.

Pete Sohn's somewhat gentler Partly Cloudy , the curtain-raiser for Up , is a wholly delightful affair and tangentially related to the full-length film it precedes. Storks pick up bundles from anthropomorphic clouds to deliver to grateful earthly homes. Most are packed with cheerful pussycats, puppies and human babies. One stork, however, is tasked with carrying a succession of increasingly difficult passengers, including an aggressive goat, an alligator, a porcupine, a shark and an electric eel. These creatures do far more than ruffle his feathers until he stoically arms himself for the fray.

At the centre of Up is Carl Fredricksen (gruffly voiced by Ed Asner), a curmudgeonly widower and retired balloon salesman in late middle age. He's rather like the characters Walter Matthau specialised in or a less offensive version of Clint Eastwood's ex-factory worker in Gran Torino .

We first see him as a schoolboy, his youthful sense of adventure whetted by the appearance of his hero, Charles F Muntz (Christopher Plummer), in a black-and-white newsreel shown in a cinema back in the 1930s. Muntz travels the world in his airship, The Spirit of Adventure, visiting exotic places and collecting strange animals, and Carl and his spirited childhood sweetheart, Ellie, are determined to emulate him.

In a moving, dialogue-free sequence, Carl and Ellie marry, do up an old Victorian house and grow old together, but unfortunately cannot have children. They put money into a glass jar to fund their journey to the mythical Paradise Falls in South America, but they have to break it open to pay for a series of accidents and Ellie is dead before they have the chance to leave home. This echoes the story of George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life .

Then the film slips into Wizard of Oz mode when Carl's wooden frame-house (rather like the one behind the couple in the Grant Wood painting American Gothic ) is threatened by property developers. He accidentally injures a builder, is denounced as a danger to the public and faces a future in a retirement home.

Rebelling against his fate, Carl attaches several thousand toy balloons to the house and takes off into the blue yonder, bound for Paradise Falls. Unbeknown to him, an accidental stowaway, the nine-year-old Russell, a plump, dead keen Wilderness Explorer, a sort of Boy Scout, is aboard. He'd been hoping Carl would help him win a badge for helping old people. Eventually, the two bond on their way to Paradise Falls, and the irascible Carl discovers both the son he never had and his own youthful self by fulfilling the adventure he and Ellie didn't manage.

But after dragging their house across the rugged South American terrain in the manner of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo , they meet a friendly, 15-foot bird of paradise and have a disillusioning encounter with the man obsessed with tracking it down, the celebrated explorer Muntz. This obsessed sadist lives alone on his airship tethered in the jungle with slavering dogs he's taught to speak and to kill and thinks only of restoring his early fame.

Muntz seems largely inspired by the adventurer-film-maker Merian C Cooper who in the 1930s made two movies back to back using the same sets: King Kong and the thriller The Most Dangerous Game , about a reclusive genius, forerunner of the Bond villains, using a pack of ferocious dogs to hunt intruders on his domain. Both these films are evoked in Up , which features a number of inventive, superbly drawn chases on land and in the air that are as exciting as the best action movies of recent years.

Yet at the end, what we most remember are the characters: the lovable Carl, hiding behind his protective shell and cherishing his memories of Ellie; the eager, idealistic Russell; and the exotic bird; and Dug, the talking dog, who attach themselves to them. The moral is the familiar one that Dorothy discovered on returning from Oz – that the bluebird of happiness is to be found in your own back yard. But it is accompanied by another message, the one Muntz has failed to grasp – that fabulous creatures of nature should be left to live in their native habitats rather than snared and brought into captivity.

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Movie Review | 'Up'

The House That Soared

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By Manohla Dargis

May 28, 2009

In its opening stretch the new Pixar movie “Up” flies high, borne aloft by a sense of creative flight and a flawlessly realized love story. Its on-screen and unlikely escape artist is Carl Fredricksen, a widower and former balloon salesman with a square head and a round nose that looks ready for honking. Voiced with appreciable impatience by Ed Asner, Carl isn’t your typical American animated hero. He’s 78, for starters, and the years have taken their toll on his lugubrious body and spirit, both of which seem solidly tethered to the ground. Even the two corners of his mouth point straight down. It’s as if he were sagging into the earth.

Eventually a bouquet of balloons sends Carl and his house soaring into the sky, where they go up, up and away and off to an adventure in South America with a portly child, some talking (and snarling and gourmet-cooking) dogs and an unexpected villain. Though the initial images of flight are wonderfully rendered the house shudders and creaks and splinters and groans as it’s ripped from its foundation by the balloons the movie remains bound by convention, despite even its modest 3-D depth. This has become the Pixar way. Passages of glorious imagination are invariably matched by stock characters and banal story choices, as each new movie becomes another manifestation of the movie-industry divide between art and the bottom line.

In “Up” that divide is evident between the early scenes, which tell Carl’s story with extraordinary tenderness and brilliant narrative economy, and the later scenes of him as a geriatric action hero. The movie opens with the young Carl enthusing over black-and-white newsreel images of his hero, a world-famous aviator and explorer, Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). Shortly thereafter, Carl meets Ellie, a plucky, would-be adventurer who, a few edits later, becomes his beloved wife, an adult relationship that the director Pete Docter brilliantly compresses into some four wordless minutes during which the couple dream together, face crushing disappointment and grow happily old side by side. Like the opener of “Wall-E” and the critic’s Proustian reminiscence of childhood in “Ratatouille,” this is filmmaking at its purest.

The absence of words suggests that Mr. Docter and the co-director Bob Peterson, with whom he wrote the screenplay, are looking back to the silent era, as Andrew Stanton did with the Chaplinesque start to “Wall-E.” Even so, partly because “Up” includes a newsreel interlude, its marriage sequence also brings to mind the breakfast table in “Citizen Kane.” In this justly famous (talking) montage, Orson Welles shows the collapse of a marriage over a number of years through a series of images of Kane and his first wife seated across from each other at breakfast, another portrait of a marriage in miniature. As in their finest work, the Pixar filmmakers have created thrilling cinema simply by rifling through its history.

Those thrills begin to peter out after the boy, Russell (Jordan Nagai), inadvertently hitches a ride with Carl, forcing the old man to assume increasingly grandfatherly duties. But before that happens there are glories to savor, notably the scenes of Carl having decided to head off on the kind of adventure Ellie and he always postponed taking to the air. When the multihued balloons burst through the top of his wooden house it’s as if a thousand gloriously unfettered thoughts had bloomed above his similarly squared head. Especially lovely is the image of a little girl jumping in giddy delight as the house rises in front of her large picture window, the sunlight through the balloons daubing her room with bright color.

In time Carl and Russell, an irritant whose Botero proportions recall those of the human dirigibles in “Wall-E,” float to South America where they, the house and the movie come down to earth. Though Mr. Docter’s visual imagination shows no signs of strain here the image of Carl stubbornly pulling his house, now tethered to his torso, could have come out of the illustrated Freud the story grows progressively more formulaic. And cuter. Carl comes face to face with his childhood hero, Muntz, an eccentric with the dashing looks and frenetic energy of a younger Kirk Douglas. Muntz lives with a legion of talking dogs with which he has been hunting a rare bird whose gaudy plumage echoes the palette of Carl’s balloons.

The talking dogs are certainly a hoot, including the slobbering yellow furball Dug and a squeaky-voiced Doberman, Alpha (both Mr. Peterson), not to mention the dog in the kitchen and the one that pops open the Champagne. And there’s something to be said about the revelation that heroes might not be what you imagined, particularly in a children’s movie and particularly one released by Disney. (Muntz seems partly inspired by Charles Lindbergh at his most heroic and otherwise.) But much like Russell, the little boy with father problems, and much like Dug, the dog with master issues, the story starts to feel ingratiating enough to warrant a kick. O.K., O.K., not a kick, just some gently expressed regret.

“Up” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). A wee bit of gentle action and a climactic fight scene, but nothing inappropriate for any viewer of any age.

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Pete Docter; co-directed by Bob Peterson; written by Mr. Docter and Mr. Peterson based on a story by Mr. Docter, Mr. Peterson and Tom McCarthy; director of photography, camera, Patrick Lin; director of photography, lighting, Jean-Claude Kalache; edited by Kevin Nolting; music by Michael Giacchino; production designer, Ricky Nierva; produced by Jonas Rivera; released by Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

WITH THE VOICES OF: Ed Asner (Carl Fredricksen), Christopher Plummer (Charles Muntz), Jordan Nagai (Russell), Bob Peterson (Dug/Alpha), Delroy Lindo (Beta), Jerome Ranft (Gamma) and John Ratzenberger (Construction Foreman Tom).

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Edward Asner, Bob Peterson, and Jordan Nagai in Up (2009)

78-year-old Carl Fredricksen travels to Paradise Falls in his house equipped with balloons, inadvertently taking a young stowaway. 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen travels to Paradise Falls in his house equipped with balloons, inadvertently taking a young stowaway. 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen travels to Paradise Falls in his house equipped with balloons, inadvertently taking a young stowaway.

Pete Docter
Bob Peterson
Tom McCarthy
Edward Asner
Jordan Nagai
John Ratzenberger
1K User reviews
416 Critic reviews
88 Metascore
81 wins & 87 nominations total

Carl Fredricksen
(as Ed Asner)

Construction Foreman Tom

Charles Muntz

Newsreel Announcer
Young Ellie
Police Officer Edith
(as Mickie T. McGowan)

Construction Worker Steve

Nurse George
(as Don Fullilove)

Campmaster Strauch

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Trivia Before the film's worldwide release date, Pixar granted a wish from 10-year-old Colby Curtin to see the movie before she died. Colby had been diagnosed with cancer and was too sick to go to a theater. A Pixar employee flew to the Curtins' house with a DVD of the finished film and screened it for her and her family. Curtin died seven hours later at 9:20 pm, shortly after seeing the movie.
Goofs The phrase "Jiminy Cricket" was used in common slang as a euphemism for "Jesus Christ" (in context of a "cuss" word) since the 1920s. The expression is spoken in movies like The Brave Little Tailor (1938) and The Wizard of Oz (1939) . Pinocchio (1940) had a character named Jiminy Cricket who was named after the expression, not the other way around.

[Carl, in his once-again airborne house, suddenly hears a knock at the front door]

Carl Fredricksen : [Surprised] Russell?

[opens the door to find Dug on his doorstep and is very happy]

Carl Fredricksen : [Smiles] Dug!

Dug : [Looking sad] I was hiding under your porch because I love you. Can I stay?

Carl Fredricksen : [Delightfully] Can you stay? Why, you're my dog, aren't you? And I'm your master!

Dug : [His sadness turns to happiness. As he happily wags his tail] You are my master? Oh, boy! Oh, boy!

[lunges forward and covers Carl in slobbery kisses]

Carl Fredricksen : [laughing] Good boy, Dug. You're a good boy.

Crazy credits The photographs of characters shown during the end credits thematically match the crew members' positions, as do the "Wilderness Explorer" badges that also appear.
Alternate versions In international prints, the label on the savings jar for Paradise Falls bears a drawing of said place as opposed to text.
Connections Edited into Dug's Special Mission (2009)
Soundtracks Habanera (uncredited) (1875) from "Carmen" Composed by Georges Bizet Arranged by Michael Giacchino

User reviews 1K

May 30, 2009
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May 29, 2009 (United States)
United States
Official Facebook
Official site
Shoots the Moon
Pixar Animation Studios - 1200 Park Avenue, Emeryville, California, USA
Pixar Animation Studios
Walt Disney Pictures
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$175,000,000 (estimated)
$293,004,164
$68,108,790
May 31, 2009
$735,102,136

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 36 minutes
Dolby Digital
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Surround 7.1