Latest screening: Up

Some day Pixar will make a terrible, terrible film and it will signal Armageddon but with Up the most consistently excellent studio has turned out another masterpiece. And masterpiece is the only word. Pixar have their lesser films, most notably the resolutely 3-star or 7/10 ish Cars and A Bug’s Life, but most of the time they bat out of the park. And that’s what they’ve done here. A 10/10, 5-star movie Up continues another superb run from the studio which follows Ratatouille and WALL-E.

I have now seen Up 3 times (all, appropriately, in 3D) and it just gets better each time. At various moments hilarious, touching, delightful, heart-breaking and beautiful it is a triumph for director Pete Docter and his team.

The film opens with a beautifully realised prologue that charts the life of our grumpy old man lead character Carl. One film on from WALL-E Pixar again proves the power of a dialogue free story. This segment takes you through emotional, funny highs and sad lows in a way that in itself would have made an Oscar-winning short film with ease. Ten minutes in you are already drained but Up won’t let you wallow as it is then immediately into a great visual gag involving a stair-lift.

Then we get to the real story which sees our hero Carl determined to avoid a fate forced on him by an evil politically-correct world with no heart or understanding by following his life-long dream to travel to ‘Paradise Falls’, an idealic lost-world in South America. As you’d have to have your head in the sand not to know he decides to achieve this by flying his house with the help of thousands of helium-filled balloons, which he used to sell at an adventure park.

He’s joined on his journey by surprise unintentional stow-away Russell, an idealistic wilderness explorer; and later Kevin, a giant bird of paradise; and Dug a “talking dog!” as they all come up against and get on the bad side of Christopher Plummer’s stir crazy villain and his pack of highly-trained dogs.

The genius of Pixar is evident at every turn. As a comedy it is the studio’s funniest since Docter’s debut Monsters, Inc. It has the heart and emotional impact of WALL-E. It works completely as an adventure story like The Incredibles, with genuine excitement and edge-of-your-seat thrills, always perfectly punctured by a well judged gag, whether visual or verbal.

The introductions to all three supporting characters are organic and expertly handled, whether Russell’s nervous excitement; Kevin’s mystery; or Dug’s easy joke. All 4 leads get to share the laughs and emotion equally.

Dug’s talking is well conceived and the insight into the canine mind seems spot on. Russell manages never to be irritating and Carl is never too cantankerous. All feel like real characters, and that makes it all the more intriguing, and yet right, that they’ve opted for a very cartoonish look. Up goes for no realism in the look, especially for Carl. After WALL-E’s beautiful imagery that belied its animated creation, Up is overtly cartoonish. Carl is basically square. His head is huge, his body short. One scene which sees Russell climb up Carl highlights this – Carl’s nose is the same size as Russell’s foot. Yet this is absolutely the right approach for Up. It is a film about an old man flying a house with balloons in search of a mythical land, realism is not what it’s about.

The 3D is also used better than any film has ever used it. Docter plays with the depth of the 3D, deepening it in moments of glorious joy and high excitement to add to the adrenaline; and then flattening it to the point of being able to take the glasses off and watch normally in moments of sadness and intimacy.

As usual Pixar shows the rest of the field how it should be done and if they don’t add a third consecutive Best Animated Feature Oscar to their mantle then the Oscars should simply be closed down for either corruption or stupidity.

As a last quick side note, the accompanying short Partly Cloudy is one of the most complementary put out with a Pixar feature. Again mixing humour with emotion in what is again basically a silent film. Bravo all round. If only all film’s could be Pixar films! (speaking of which check out the trailer for next summer’s Toy Story 3 on the trailer bar on the right).