Review: Up
I got back from vacation Friday and, after returning my rental car, went and saw Up.
Now, I’m not normally the kind of person who goes to see kid’s movies, but either I’d seen everything else worth seeing, or my friend had, so we ended up at Up.
The premise is simple, in a way. We start with a young boy who’s caught up with a 1940’s adventurer who travels the world in a zeppelin with his faithful dogs. That adventurer claims to have found a rare creature on a lost world plateau in South America, but he can’t provide enough proof of his discovery, so he ends up drummed out of the explorer’s society and disgraced.
On the way home from watching his favorite adventurer on the news reel, he finds an old house that’s been sort of taken over by a young girl, who’s far more bold and, well, adventurous than he is. They fall in love, get married, make plans to go to South America where their mutual hero has gone, never to return, only to have those plans thwarted by life, and her eventual death. As one might imagine, this makes the old man a little less than fun, friendly and happy. Now, add in the developers who are trying to get him out of his house which he shared with his deceased wife and a chubby, little Asian “Adventure Scout” who just wants to help the old man to get his last badge to make Senior Scout and you’ve got a pretty unhappy guy.
Without revealing too much, circumstances turn even worse for the old man and he inflates hundreds of helium balloons to lift his house, like his hero’s zeppelin, and “sail” South to find the plateau where his dead wife wanted to move their house as a child. In his own way, he’s trying to fulfill his wife’s last wish.
They get there, to South America, and animated hi-jinks ensue. And, I’m sure how much I’d be “spoiling” anything by telling you all more of the plot, but I won’t tell you much more. Suffice it to say that the young man and the old man have adventures on the plateau while trying to get the house where it has the view the old man’s wife wanted it to have. They meet strange creatures and, yes, a dog that talks through a collar made by his master. And, along the way to the happy ending you know this feel-good movie has to have, the boy and the man both learn something about happiness and adventure and how our friends can provide the love and support that our family can’t always manage.
If you have kids, I’m sure you’ll see this movie, but it’s cute enough, and filled with enough subtle adult jokes, that you won’t mind taking the kids. Certainly, I was entertained enough by the whole thing that I didn’t mind going at all. It was, after all, a fun movie with a cute message and a happy ending. If you’re an adult, without kids, you may not be quite as excited by this movie, but, trust me, it’s worth seeing. Though, not worth seeing twice.
Oh, and in case you were interested, here are pictures of my 2009 vacation. Enjoy!
