Pixar soars once again, lifting audiences UP

Something has been a bit off with Pixar. Though enjoyable, I never quite understood the excitement over The Incredibles.  Cars was utterly boring. Ratatouille was cute, but lacked a vitality of inspiration.  And WALL•E, which began with such invigorating promise, abruptly devolved into cute-robot-saves-the-day dreck. Pixar, the company I had built such high hopes for based on the visual delights and depths of emotion presented in the Toy Storys and Finding Nemo, was dropping the ball. 

And then I saw Up.  

Everything I had been missing about Pixar was there: complex human emotion presented through beautifully simple storytelling, clever dialogue and honest humor, and breathtaking, fantastical feats of visual imagineering.  Within the first ten minutes of the film, I had laughed loudly and openly, abruptly and quietly wept, and then laughed again before I had a chance to wipe away the tears.

The story is simple:  we watch as the withdrawn Carl (the wonderful, curmudgeonly Ed Asner) meets his childhood sweetheart and fellow adventurer, the charmingly boisterous Ellie. Through a brilliantly calibrated and underscored sequence sans dialogue, we witness them fall in love and marry; we weep with Ellie upon the devastating realization that she cannot have the children they so longed for, and we  whole-heartedly root for them as they save and plan for the South American adventure they had always dreamt of experiencing together. When life gets in the way and their grand plan falls to the wayside, that’s exactly when the adventure begins: Carl attaches a rainbow of balloons to their lifelong home, and in a loving tribute to his beloved Ellie, steers the makeshift contraption to Paradise Falls, along the way, learning the life lessons of how to let go and open himself to new experiences and new loves. Of course, Carl does this all with the help of a quirky and endlessly amusing supporting cast of characters including the youngand adorably earnest boyscout-stowaway, Russell, the loyal and lovable canine, Doug, and the maniacal foil and one-time idolized explorer, Charles Muntz (the always wonderful, and in this case, delightfully despicable, Christopher Plummer).

While the story is predictably conventional, there’s a reason Carl’s tale of loss and rediscovery is one of the oldest narratives in existence: it is universally true, resonating with all audiences, everywhere. Carl’s tale is heartbreaking and heartwarming, and Pixar tells it so thoroughly and subtly, and with such elegance and understanding of the human experience, that instead of overpowering the beautiful simplicity of the story, the awe-inspiring animation elevates and enhances its inherent narrative delights through lush coloring, vibrant characterizations, and heartrending sequences. The title is more than fitting: as Carl and his house of balloons alternately ascends and falls, paralleling his life journey, we know that no matter how weighed down or disheartening life becomes, there’s nowhere to go but Up.  And that genuine and open optimism creates the best kind of (Pixar) adventure.

Pixar Gets Political

Not since Short Circuit have we encountered such an adorably harmless robot.  Wall•E is a simple ‘bot who putters out his days humming Hello, Dolly! tunes and discovering treasure in others’ trash (dinglehopper, anyone?).  It isn’t until a fem ‘bot lands on the devastated Earth that we realize our hero’s true plight:  the little guy just wants some love.  And, of course, to save Earth along the way — or does he really want that after all?

If the basic plot of finding love and/or a sense of belonging seems all too familiar to us (everything from The Little Mermaid to E.T. to Lilo and Stitch come to mind), what does seem  different is the overt politics that spring up mid-’toon that are only resolved when the love quandary of our faithful ‘bot is happily settled.  Pixar isn’t dealing with complex emotions and character relationships as it has in the past; in Wall•E, writer and director Andrew Stanton has discarded those notable trademarks for a strangely simplistic statement concerning the environment and how our ignorance and laziness will most assuredly lead to the absolute destruction of the planet.  That is, of course, until we remember that what the world needs now, is love, sweet love, and then we realize that all will be righted soon enough.

Perhaps I’m being too hard on what many would defend as just a “kids movie,” and what others would call an amazing technological feat (as always, the details are delightful and the artistry in animation stunning).  The problem with that argument is that Pixar’s films are always awe-inspiring to look at, and the company doesn’t create just “kids movies,” it never has.  Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles all subtly produce rich characters and situations and the emotions always run high and deep in those films.  Wall•E never reaches those heights because no matter how many times our protagonist (and he is A-dorable)  induces “awwws” from me and the rest of the audience, he never accomplishes anything more.  The adorable android dutifully collects garbage, carefully crunching the junk into easily disposable cubes, but he doesn’t do it because he cares about having a clean Earth.  Just like the blobby humans the film depicts as unthinkingly wittling away their days as a planet goes to ruin, Wall•E simply zooms along, carelessly cleaning out of routine — until a girl comes around, and then he finally cares about saving the Earth, but only because she does, and only because she has been given the “directive” to.  

Where Wall•E fails in creating complex characters and subtle plot, however, it makes up for in clever sequences involving the ‘bot’s daily musings (a favorite:  his grudgingly awakening and, groggy, unable to put on his “shoes”) and his dedicated fawning over the laser-happy female ‘bot, Eva. The flick also boasts a typically hilarious Pixar short involving a short-tempered magician and his hungry and rather industrious rabbit.  In the end, I was glad to have met Wall•E; I only wish I had gotten to know him better.