Up (2009)

As children, Carl and Ellie meet and bond over their love of explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), whose most famous expedition was to Paradise Falls in South America.

Carl and Ellie pledge to each other that they will one day go to Paradise Falls, and meet the great Muntz in person.

Staying together for their entire lives, until Ellie passes away, they sadly never make good on that pledge, and Carl (now elderly, voiced by Edward Asner) lives alone in the same house they moved into together when they got married.

But all around him, the world is changing. A property developer wants to build apartments, and continually pesters Carl to sell him his property too, as it stands right in the middle of where he is already building.

Carl is stubborn, however, and refuses to budge; this house is all he has left to remember the many good times he had with his wife.

After an altercation with the construction workers, Carl is about to be admitted to Shady Oaks Retirement Village. But when staff turn up to escort him to his new home, he has other ideas.

Tying hundreds of helium-filled balloons to the top of his house, he lifts right off the ground, and begins his promised journey to Paradise Falls.

It isn’t until he gets hundreds of feet into the air that he discovers he has a ‘stowaway’ on his porch: Junior Wilderness Explorer (basically a Boy Scout) Russell (Jordan Nagai), who only needs one more badge to become a Senior Wilderness Explorer: his ‘Assisting the Elderly’ badge.

So the two of them adventure together to South America, Russell hoping to get his final badge and Carl hoping to settle down in the place he and Ellie had always wanted to visit.

As I’m sure I’ve said numerous times now, there is just something so wonderful about Pixar films, and this one is no exception.

Written by Pete Docter & Bob Peterson, the script is funny, clever, heartbreaking, tender, and so many other great adjectives. It may not be Pixar’s best film to date, but it is still a good one.

Docter and Peterson also directed the film together, and it is just as wonderful as any other Pixar film, as I’ve already said. The characters are all clearly defined, and the love between Carl and Ellie is just as strong and motivating a force as the frustration Carl has with Russell.

The plot is incredibly inventive (I mean, whoever thought it was possible to fly your entire house to South America using balloons?) but within the confines of the film, it feels perfectly normal and acceptable.

The voice cast are all fantastic. I’m sure this is one of the most fun parts of an animated film for the directors: choosing actors whose voices will best capture the particular nuances of character you’re going for. It’s impossible now to imagine these characters being voiced by anybody else, as it is the voices themselves that make and define the characters.

But what I want to focus on the most in this review is the music. Michael Giacchino’s score is absolutely superb, and an opportunity for anyone studying film scoring technique to learn some of the greatest lessons, more informative than anything a traditional class environment could teach you.

Giacchino has written a theme - a leitmotif - to represent Carl and Ellie’s relationship, and this theme recurs many times throughout the film. Each time it appears, the instrumentation is different. Occasionally the tempo varies. Sometimes the key centre changes, sometimes the mode changes, but each time, it is the ‘same’ theme.

This serves to unite the entire film as one story: the story of Carl and Ellie, even though Ellie is not physically present for the majority of the film. But the way the music is used like this is just beautiful, and even if the audience only realises it unconsciously, Ellie is as much a part of this film (as a whole) as any of the other characters, if not more so.

As I’ve already mentioned, this may not be Pixar’s best film overall. But it does have the best music of any Pixar film to date.

8 out of 10.

Finding Nemo (2003)

Undeniably one of Pixar’s best films, this picture shows the incredible lengths a father will go to to protect his son.

After a tragedy robs him of his wife and all but one of his offspring, clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks) is incredibly protective of his young son Nemo (Alexander Gould), in fact, he is incredibly overprotective of him, not really allowing him to do anything on his own.

When Nemo is taken one day by two men on a boat, Marlin – without a second thought – swims after the boat as fast as he can. But he is not fast enough, and now his son is gone.

While swimming after the boat, Marlin runs into a blue fish by the name of Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), who suffers from short term memory loss (at least, she thinks she does). The two of them head off on an adventure across the ocean to find Nemo and bring him home again.

Meanwhile, Nemo finds himself in a fish tank in a dentist’s surgery in Sydney. The other occupants of the tank have been trying to escape for some time, and Nemo’s arrival – and desire to be back in the ocean where he belongs – merely adds fuel to their fire.

Under the direction of Gill (Willem Dafoe), a fish who has injured himself on one of his many attempts at escape, the rest of the fish try one scheme after another to try and get out of their ‘prison’.

I think that’s enough plot description for now. Let’s get straight into the review itself.

The first thing I have to say is that computer animation capabilities have come a long way from Pixar’s first film, Toy Story, only 8 years before Finding Nemo was released. The oceanscape in the film is absolutely spectacular, full of colour and full of life. Also, the nuances that can be displayed with computer animation have vastly improved (look into Dory’s eyes when she says the line ‘I’m home’ towards the end of the film and you will see what I mean).

The casting of this film – as with many other Pixar films – is truly inspired. In particular, Ellen DeGeneres as Dory is fabulous. She brings so much to the character, and her performance is fantastic. (It was only going to be a matter of time before Dory became the star of her own film; stay tuned for a review of Finding Dory later this year).

Other notable cast members include Brad Garrett as a puffer fish (in the dentist’s aquarium) and Barry Humphries as a shark who has sworn off eating fish (remember, fish are friends, not food!).

Director Andrew Stanton (who co-wrote the screenplay with Bob Peterson & David Reynolds) and co-director Lee Unkrich have created – in my mind – a true masterpiece of cinema, a film that stands up on its own against the best live-action comedy or drama film.

For the longest time after seeing this film (initially in the cinema, later on DVD repeatedly) I would call it Pixar’s best film. In fact, every Pixar film I have seen since I have compared back to this ie. ‘the best Pixar film since Finding Nemo’. I think that’s just about the best recommendation I can make for this film.

Seriously, if you haven’t seen it yet, you need to do so immediately. You will thank me for it. And if you have seen it, check it out again; no harm can come from watching a film over again, especially one as brilliantly executed as this.

9 1/2 out of 10.