Up

Up is a computer-animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It is distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, and premiered by opening the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. The film was released on May 29, 2009 in North America and scheduled for release on October 16, 2009 in the United Kingdom. This is director Pete Docter's (Monsters, Inc.) second film, and features the voices of Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson and Jordan Nagai. The film has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, with a current rating of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Plot
Carl Fredricksen, a quiet young boy, meets the tomboy Ellie, discovering together they share the same interest in exploration as their hero, famed explorer Charles Muntz. Ellie expresses her interest in building a house near Paradise Falls in South America, a promise she makes Carl keep. Carl and Ellie wed and grow old together; unable to have children, the two try to save up for the trip to Paradise Falls but life continues to get in the way. Finally, Ellie succumbs to old age, leaving Carl living alone in the same house where they first met.
When construction crews attempt to displace Carl from his home, he steadfastly remains, accidentally injures a construction worker, and is forced by the courts to go to an assisted living home. However, remembering his promise to Ellie, Carl inflates thousands of helium balloons and creates a steering mechanism, allowing him to lift his house and take it to South America. However, he inadvertently has brought along Wilderness Explorer Russell, who Carl had previous sent on a snipe hunt the day before, and reluctantly lets the boy in. The two manage to navigate the house to South America, finding themselves across a large ravine facing Paradise Falls. As their body weight provides enough buoyancy to allow them to "drag" the house behind, the two begin to walk around the ravine while the balloons still keep the house afloat. As they travel, Carl learns that Russell is attempting to advance in rank in the Explorers by getting his "Assisting the Elderly" badge, in hopes that he will see his distant father at the ceremony.
Along the way, they meet a colorful female tropical bird with a liking to chocolate, which Russell calls "Kevin", and a dog named Dug, wearing a special collar that translates his thoughts into English. Dug immediately befriends the humans, but insists Kevin is his prisoner. The group is soon met by other, more vicious dogs, also with translation collars, led by a dog named Alpha. The dogs take them to their owner, Charles Muntz, who has remained in South America with his personal dirigible, seeking a bird like Kevin in order to restore his fame after he was called a falsifier decades ago when he brought back the skeleton of one of the birds. Though Carl is initially thrilled to meet his hero, when he realizes that Muntz is after Kevin and will kill to get her, Carl takes steps to save the bird and escape from Muntz. As they assist the injured Kevin to her chicks, Muntz appears, led by a tracking device in Dug's collar, and sets Carl's house on fire, forcing Carl to choose his house over Kevin, who chooses his house. Muntz and his dogs quickly capture the bird and fly off. Though Carl successfully gets the house on the ground overlooking Paradise Falls per Ellie's wish, he has lost Russell's favor. Carl, settling down in his house, finds Ellie's scrapbook and discovers her mementos of her life with Carl after they wed, and a final note from her to thank Carl for her adventure and an encouragement for him to go on his own. Invigorated by Ellie's last wish, he goes outside to see Russell, only to find him giving chase to Muntz with a couple dozen balloons and a leaf blower. Carl tosses the house's furniture aside as ballast, allowing him to chase after Muntz with Dug by his side.
Russell is captured by Muntz's dogs, and is left to fall to the earth, but Carl is able to save him; Carl and Dug board the ship, and are able to lure the guard dogs away from Kevin to free her. Carl and Muntz meet face to face and fight (Muntz with a sword, Carl with his cane), while Dug is able to wrest control of the dogs and the dirigible from Alpha. The fight leads onto the outside of the dirigible where Russell has flown the house in order to rescue his friends, but Muntz shoots out some of the balloons, causing the house to slide off. Carl manages to trick Muntz inside the house while saving Russell, Dug, and Kevin; Muntz falls to earth while Carl's house drifts off into the clouds.
Carl takes Muntz's dirigible and returns Kevin to her chicks, and then returns Russell and Dug back to the city. Carl takes the place of Russell's absent father at the Explorers' ceremony for Russell, and begins to spend more time with Russell and Dug, and eventually the other Wilderness Explorers, continuing with life as Ellie wished. His house finally came to rest as Ellie would have wanted it, overlooking Paradise Falls.

Production

Story
The fantasy of a flying house was born out from director Pete Docter's thoughts about escaping from life when it becomes too irritating, which he explained stemmed from his difficulty with social situations growing up. Writing began in 2004. Actor and writer Thomas McCarthy aided Docter and Bob Peterson in shaping the story for about three months. Docter selected an old man for the main character after drawing a picture of a grumpy old man with smiling balloons. The two men thought an old man was a good idea for a protagonist because they felt their experiences and the way it affects their view of the world was a rich source of humor. Docter was not concerned with an elderly protagonist, stating children would relate to Carl in the way they relate to their grandparents.
Docter noted the film reflects his friendships with Disney veterans Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Joe Grant (who all died before the film's release). Grant gave the script his approval as well as some advice before his death in 2005. Docter recalled Grant would remind him the audience needed an "emotional bedrock" because of how wacky the adventure would become; in this case it is Carl mourning for his wife. Docter felt Grant's personality influenced Carl's deceased wife Ellie more than the grouchy main character, and Carl was primarily based on Spencer Tracy and Walter Matthau, because there was "something sweet about these grumpy old guys". Docter and Jonas Rivera noted Carl's charming nature in spite of his grumpiness derives from the elderly "hav[ing] this charm and almost this 'old man license' to say things that other people couldn’t get away with [...] It's like how we would go to eat with Joe Grant and he would call the waitresses 'honey'. I wish I could call a waitress 'honey'."
The filmmakers' first story outline had Carl "just wanted to join his wife up in the sky," Docter said. "It was almost a kind of strange suicide mission or something. And obviously that's [a problem]. Once he gets airborne, then what? So we had to have some goal for him to achieve that he had not yet gotten." Docter created Dug as he felt it would be refreshing to show what a dog thinks, rather than what people assume it thinks. The idea derived from thinking about what would happen if someone broke a record player and it always played at a low pitch. Russell was added to the story at a later date than Dug and Kevin; his presence, as well as the construction workers, helped to make the story feel less episodic.
Carl's relationship with Russell reflects how "he's not really ready for the whirlwind that a kid is, as few of us are". Docter added he saw Up as "coming of age" tale and an "unfinished love story", with Carl still dealing with the loss of his wife. He cited inspiration from Casablanca and A Christmas Carol, which are both "resurrection" stories about men who lose something, and regain purpose during their journey. Docter and Rivera cited inspiration from the Muppets, Hayao Miyazaki, Dumbo and Peter Pan. They also saw parallels to The Wizard of Oz and tried to make Up not feel too similar. There is a scene where Carl and Russell haul the floating house through the jungle. A Pixar employee compared the scene to Fitzcarraldo, and Docter watched that film and The Mission for further inspiration.

Cast
* Edward Asner as Carl Fredricksen. Docter and Rivera noted Asner's television alter-ego Lou Grant had been helpful in writing for Carl, because it guided them in balancing likeable and unlikeable aspects of the curmudgeonly character. When they met Asner and presented him with a model of his character, he joked "I don't look anything like that." They would tailor his dialogue for him, with short sentences and more consonants, which "cemented the notion that Carl, post-Ellie, is a disgruntled bear that's been poked awake during hibernation".
* Jordan Nagai as Russell, an Asian American Wilderness Explorer stowaway on Carl's flying house. He accompanies Carl in order to earn his "assisting the elderly" badge: the only one he doesn't have. Russell was patterned after the personality of animator Peter Sohn. Docter auditioned 400 boys in a nationwide casting call for the part. Nagai, who is Japanese American showed up to an audition with his brother, who was actually the one auditioning. Docter realized Nagai behaved and spoke non-stop like Russell and chose him for the part. Nagai was seven years old when cast. Docter encouraged Nagai to act physically as well as vocally when recording the role, lifting him upside down and tickling him for the scene where Russell encounters Kevin. Asian Americans have positively noted Pixar's first casting of an leading character as an Asian, in contrast to the common practice of casting non-Asians in Asian parts.
* Bob Peterson as Dug, a dog with a collar that translates his thoughts into comical-sounding English, and is the odd duck out of a pack of dogs with similar collars owned by Muntz. Peterson knew he would voice Dug when he wrote his line "I have just met you, and I love you," which was based on what a child told him when he was a camp counselor in the 1980s.
o Peterson also voices Alpha, a talking Doberman Pinscher[citation needed] and the leader of Muntz's pack of dogs. Despite his menacing appearance, a malfunction in his collar occasionally causes his voice to sound comically high-pitched and squeaky.
* Kevin, a large tropical bird. Russell impulsively gives the bird a male name, only later learning that Kevin is female.
* Christopher Plummer as Charles F. Muntz, the villain. He was an adventurer Carl and his wife admired when they were children. He disappeared after scientists claimed he had faked his discovery of the skeleton of a 13-foot tall bird (Kevin's breed), vowing to find a living specimen. Pete Docter compared Muntz to Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes.
* Delroy Lindo as Beta, one of Muntz's talking dogs.
* Jerome Ranft as Gamma, one of Muntz's talking dogs.
* John Ratzenberger as Tom, a construction worker.
* Elizabeth "Ellie" Docter as Young Ellie, Carl's late wife (as a child). Elizabeth is the director's daughter.

Design
Docter made Venezuela the film's setting after Ralph Eggleston gave him a video of the tepui mountains. In 2004, Docter and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days reaching Monte Roraima by airplane, jeep and helicopter. They spent three nights there painting and sketching, and encountering dangerous ants, mosquitos, scorpions, frogs and snakes. They also flew to Matawi Tepui and climbed to Angel Falls, as well as Brazil. Docter felt "we couldn't use [the rocks and plants we saw]. Reality is so far out, if we put it in the movie you wouldn't believe it." The film's creatures were also challenging to design because they had to fit in the surreal environment of the tepuis, but also be realistic because those mountains exist in real life. The filmmakers visited Sacramento Zoo to observe a rare pheasant for Kevin's animation.
Docter wanted to push a stylized feel, particularly the way Carl's body is proportioned: he has a squarish appearance to symbolize his containment within his house, while his wife's body is shaped like a balloon. The challenge on Up was making these stylized characters feel natural, although Docter remarked the effect came across better than animating the realistic humans from Toy Story, who suffered from the "uncanny valley". Cartoonists Al Hirschfeld, Hank Ketcham and George Booth influenced the human designs. Simulating realistic cloth on caricatured humans was harder than creating the 10,000 balloons flying the house. New programs were made to simulate the cloth and for Kevin's iridescent feathers. To animate old people, Pixar animators would study their own parents or grandparents and also watched footage of the Senior Olympics. The animators modeled Russell on Peter Sohn, the Pixar storyboarder who voiced Emile in Ratatouille, because of his energetic nature. Russell was also designed as Asian-American.
A technical director worked out that in order to make Carl's house fly, he would require 23 million balloons, but Docter realized that number made the balloons look like small dots. Instead, the balloons created were made to be twice Carl's size. There are 10,927 balloons for shots of the house just flying, 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence, and it varies in other scenes.

Release
Up is the first Pixar film to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D. The film premiered by opening the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, the first animated film to do so. It was accompanied in theaters by the short film Partly Cloudy, directed by Peter Sohn. Whenever the film is screened at the El Capitan Theatre from May 29 to July 23, it will be accompanied by Lighten Up!, a live show featuring Pixar's characters.
Among the children's books that will be published to promote the film is My Name is Dug, which was illustrated by screenwriter Ronnie del Carmen. Despite Pixar's track record, Target Corporation and Wal-Mart will stock few Up items, while Pixar's regular collaborator Thinkway Toys will not produce merchandise, claiming its story is unusual and will be hard to promote. Disney acknowledged not every Pixar film would have to become a franchise. Promotional partners include Aflac, NASCAR and Airship Ventures, while Cluster Balloons will promote the film with a replica of Carl's couch that will be lifted by hot air balloons, that journalists can sit in. It is the first Pixar film since The Incredibles to have a PG rating by the MPAA.
The film is preceded by the animated short film Partly Cloudy.

Box office
On its opening day, Up is estimated to have earned $21,400,000.


Trailer