Up: Official Site
I went to see Up without knowing much about it. From the previews and posters, I could tell that it’s a movie about an old man attaching a fleet of balloons to his house and floating away. He meets a boy scout, a dog, and a large bird along his journey. Mayhem ensues.
While it’s a mildly weird premise, it seemed like a pretty straightforward comedy adventure-type thing.
Well, it’s not. It’s odd and smart and quirky and random. Quite simply: It’s wonderful.
The world of Up is sporadically magical. For example, it’s entirely possible for our main elderly character to tie a garden hose to his porch, then wrap the hose around himself, and while the house is floating low over the ground, thanks to helium balloons, he can literally walk around with his house on his back. Apparently, that’s not a big deal. But it’s a pretty obvious metaphor as to what we allow ourselves to be weighed down by.
It somehow also managed to still be refreshingly realistic, often at points when I wasn’t expecting it to be that honest. I appreciated that the world of Up is one where if someone gets thrown to the ground, they might stay down…and they can even bleed. We can lose the people we love the most. We can watch our dreams and our goals turn to dust. And no amount of magic will bring them back.
We can even think that adventure means traveling the world and making lots of money. But Up dares to question whether holding to material things will really matter when it’s all said and done. What it might really come down to is: Did you love a lot? Were you loved a lot? As corny as it sounds, at the end of your life, that’s probably (I think definitely) what will matter the most, and not whether or not you had a house.
This was an inspiring story and it was told without insulting the audience’s intelligence. It was a tad slow at times, and some scenes did drag on longer than was probably necessary. But it’s easy to look past that because so much of it was done right.
And yes, it is genuinely a funny movie. I laughed out loud plenty of times. The fact that, in the world of Up, we could hear the thoughts of dogs thrilled me to no end. And I’m pretty sure they got that part completely right.
Up urges you to love a lot, risk a lot, and keep your heart open, even if it hurts to do so.
Go see it. It’ll be good for you.
Rating on the Hugh Jackman Scale (1 to 5 Hugh Jackmans, five being the best):
Article originally posted on the VM Blog.
See, we told you – Olga Navia did a movie review for us. For more words of wisdom, check out her blog.