In “Partly Cloudy,” we see the process of how babies are born… just not the way you might imagine. We are talking storks and such. The process starts with the clouds, which create babies of all species, essentially from themselves, with cloud material. The storks then take the bundles down to their rightful recipients. The short has no dialog, just grunting, meowing, snorting, and a bunch of other cool noises.

The story focuses on one storm cloud, not bright white like the others. He seems to be sort of an outcast. Rather than make nice cuddly puppies, he’s making electric eels, crocodiles, and sharks. The poor stork who has to carry his creations to their eventual homes takes some exception to the lot. Eventually, the stork leaves him for another cloud, at which point the cloud gets angry and shows his anger with lighting and thunder. He then gets sad, and the cloud starts raining. It was all for not, as the stork simply went to another cloud to get a football helmut and some padding. The dark cloud gets happy again, and continues on with his purpose.

OK, so the short before the movie was great, but what about the feature? One word– unbelievable!

It’s All About The Little Things

Before I say anything, I would just like to say the attention to detail was second to none. I mean, from the stitching on clothes, to lighting, reflections… nothing was taken for granted. I’m biased towards Pixar as a certain Apple Computer CEO happens to own it… but this movie doesn’t need that bias, it gets a grade of A+ from me on its own.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but the recent Pixar movies are actually moving towards adult entertainment. Now, I can’t say I’ve seen many animated movies lately, well a few, but from what I heard about WALL-E, being almost fully devoid of any dialog, I think Pixar is using the “story” as the main selling point here. It’s from the story that everything revolves, and thus everything else evolves.

A New Direction

In Up, I was shocked to see a scene in where the wife of the main character visits a doctor’s office only to find out she can’t have children. This was after she and her husband spent time painting a room for their eventual offspring. A scene a bit later shows the husband mourning in the hospital’s chapel after his wife passes away. These were two strong scenes, neither of which any child could conceivably grasp the full impact of, especially as it pertains to the story as a whole. Twice my eyes did well up a bit, and once even a tear ran down my cheek. Some scenes were that strong.

The premise of the movie is as follows, Carl and Ellie are husband and wife, and have been best friends ever since childhood. As kids, they made a pact to go on a great adventure. After they got married, they started a fund of sorts, a money jar. Over the years however, life would happen, and they would need to use the money for other things. One day, they wake up old in life, but still young at heart, and realize their dream will never come true. Ellie has kept a scrapbook of their life, with a section marked “things I want to do.” But the rest of the book is blank. Sadly, they never got to do the things they so longed for.

They continued to share life with each other until Ellie is hospitalized and eventually passes away. Carl is left all alone for the first time in his life and is facing the prospect of living the rest of his life in a nursing home, persuant to a court order for assaulting a construction worker. Carl refused to be bought out by a land developer, and as it were, the construction was going forward, all around Carl’s home.

Carl, a former balloon salesman, decides to go on that adventure after all. He promises his late wife as much. So on the morning the nursing home attendants come to pick him up, he declines, and picks himself and his house up with hundreds of balloons, filled with the remaining helium tanks he had left from his job. Carl is off on his adventure, but a little stowaway, Russell, is in for the trip of his life.

The Journey

From there, the pace gets frenetic and the action picks up. They meet creatures big and small, and a pack of dogs that can talk, thanks to their master’s electronical collars. They are chased by a mad explorer who is looking for a very rare bird and barely get back with their lives. The journey almost reminds me of “The Wizard of Oz,” in that along the way, Russell and Carl meet other characters that help them on their journey, each possessing the skills needed for all to succeed. The characters interacted well with each other, and at no time did the interaction seemed forced.

The mad explorer, Muntz, falls from his airship and dies, which was another moment where you had to think twice about this being a children’s movie. After all, this was rated PG, only the second Pixar movie to have such a distinction. The Incredibles was the other one. And I have to say, the PG rating certainly let Pixar do much more with the story to make it entertaining for adults, as well as make the story have more of an impact on the senses. This move was part drama, part comedy, and part children’s movie. The parts were blended to perfection.

Humanimation

And you know what the best part of the movie was? Towards the end, Carl opened that adventure book, the one with all the pictures of Ellie and himself. He saw all the childhood pictures, the newlywed pictures, and then stopped at the part when Ellie wrote “things I want to do.” But this time, he turned the page, and it wasn’t blank. Ellie had in fact done things she wanted to do… with Carl. It turned out that she didn’t need an adventure to fulfill her life. She already had everything she wanted in the world, and her life wasn’t a waste of time, or a missed opportunity. She in fact did the thing she wanted to do with Carl– grow old together. It was a heart-felt moment and a brilliant piece of cinema. All this time Carl assumed that Ellie missed out in life, when all the while she had everything she ever wanted.

This definitely was a movie. Not a children’s movie, but a movie that children can watch, and still get some delight out of. This however was a treat for adults. Two weeks in, and $140+ million in domestic sales, Up is sure to be a big hit for Pixar, who have never known anything but hits. With 10 movies now under its belt, and more than $2 billion in domestic receipts, Pixar has set the standard for computer animated movies.

I can’t say enough about Up and I am considering seeing it again. It was that good!

PS- I didn’t even mind missing the Lakers game…. they are up two games and Kobe is going to get his fourth ring!