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...this character study is also an action-adventure film, Carl has to go somewhere - Paradise Falls, obviously. But he doesn't have to leave his home. Threatened with eviction to an old folks' home, he attaches 20,000 helium-filled balloons to his house, and off it floats toward South America. But there's a stowaway on board: Russell (Jordan Nagai), a plump, determined kid who has been pestering Carl to let him "assist the elderly," the one good deed he needs to become a full Wilderness Explorer. The old man isn't pleased, but he's not stopping...
...Floating Away Spanning two continents and seven decades, Up begins in a 1930s movie theater. A newsreel tells us that famous explorer Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer) is just back from South America's remote Paradise Falls with the bones of a prehistoric bird. Denounced as a fraud by archaeologists, Muntz vows to retrieve a member of the species and bring it back alive. In the audience, wearing aviator goggles atop his thick-rimmed specs, is young Carl Fredricksen, who is enthralled by Muntz's motto, "There's adventure out there...
...contrast to the muted palette of Carl's home, the South American landscape is a genial riot of color that looks ravishing in whatever format the movie is shown in. Up will be projected in 3-D in many theaters, but there are no special boinggg effects, and you needn't pay the extra $3 to get the emotional or visual lift the picture delivers. In his Variety review, Todd McCarthy wrote that "the film's overall loveliness presents a conceivable argument in favor of seeing it in 2-D: Even with the strongest possible projector bulbs...
...Echoes of Oz The movie stirs lots of cinematic echoes, some natural - Walt Disney's Dumbo was a touchstone for Docter - and some weird. The dragging of a large structure over rugged South American terrain is also a motif in the Werner Herzog epic Fitzcarraldo. A love story continued after death: Remember Ghost? Docter also cites Thomas McCarthy's The Station Agent, "the story of a solitary guy who reconnects with the world...
...says, "he would get maybe 50%. So I'd tell him, 'Run around the room, run back here and say the line - ready, set, go!' We'd do it one line at a time like that." For a scene in which Russell is cradled and tickled by a giant South American bird, "I actually lifted him upside down and tickled him," Docter says, "which you probably wouldn't do with...