UP*****

What Pixar is able to bring to animation is something I don’t think anyone has really been able to explain. After every film, we are left thinking, did they really just do it again?! From toys to fish, monster to robots, Pixar keeps going up and up with their abilities to take animation to a level no other studio has been able to reach.

Up is Pixar’s tenth feature film. This time there aren’t any talking cars or rats, it’s about 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen. Carl has spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at his ripe old age, life seems to have passed him by. Until a serious of events involving thousands of balloons gives him a new lease on life.

As Carl goes up, he realizes someone may have accidently joined him for the ride. A persistent 8-year old Junior Wilderness Explorer named Russell and his dog. The adventure that Carl and Russell take as they land next to Paradise Falls is one of annoyance for Carl, but the friendship that evolves is one only Pixar can create.

Giving a synopsis of an animated film or a Pixar one for that matter is irrelevant to why we pay the money to see what masterpiece they have created. We now know after ten films, no matter what, we will leave happier than we arrived.

Edward Asner lends his voice to Carl. As always with Pixar voices, Asner is a lovely, if not grumpy counterpart to the character you grow to love throughout the movie. Christopher Plummer also excites audiences with his voice for the villain who tries to ruin Carl’s dream.

There are parts of this film I have not mentioned. The love story of Carl and his wife, who are presented in the first few minutes of film in one of the most touching and heartbreaking montages we have seen in modern day cinema. The music, the color, the extraordinary vision the animators of Pixar possess, is something you truly feel and are captivated by every second of the movie.

Every year there is a Pixar movie, every year there is an Oscar nomination and every year I don’t expect any other film to be any competition. I know that is the case again this year and pretty much for years to come.