One of the most boring, superlative driven tasks of contemporary film criticism is reviewing the near-annual Pixar picture. Talk about deja vu. Any reasonable minded individual who wandered into Wall-E last year might have imagined that the Disney owned boutique had hit a creative zenith.
It’s delightful, but where can they possibly go from here? Nobody could have known just how effectively an old man would soar once he tied helium balloons to his house. Ed Asner’s widower Carl Fredrickson may not, on paper, sound like an all-ages hero. Under threat from property developers and pining for his beloved and departed wife, this ancient grump finds friendship when a goofy young boy accidentally stows away on the pensioner’s unlikely flying machine.
But even before Russell, an earnest Wilderness Explorer (some class of boy scout, apparently) determined to earn his Assist the Elderly badge, arrives on the scene, Up has secured its place as the most poignant film of the year. A fifteen minute overture condenses Carl’s life with his late beloved into an astonishing drama; one that haunts and enlivens your quiet moments for weeks after you’ve seen it.  These rawer scenes never detract from Up’s sense of fun. Unlike say, Ratatouille, the film retains a kid’s own sense of adventure; Carl’s odyssey takes in a doofus lesser-spotted Amazonian bird, dogs wearing bark translators and Christopher Plummer’s gloriously mad villain; imagine Dick Dastardly with technological skills.
Director Pete Docter, who previously co-wrote Toy Story and helmed Monsters Inc., retains a light touch. The emotional pyrotechnics are never cloying, the Miyazaki-inspired cartooniverse is never too fantastical, nor too rooted in reality, the tableaux squeal movie classic. No wonder Pixar buffs are hailing it as the greatest film to emerge from Mr. Lassiter’s hit machine to date.