Up - Pixar at its finest

The Disney / Pixar behemoth strikes again. Between them these two organisations have virtually sown up the animation business, in partnership there is nothing stopping them. If they carry on producing fantastic films like Up then more power to them.

Up begins as a story about a young boy who sees a film about an explorer and dreams of all the adventures he will have. Sounds like the classic start of a Disney film doesn't it. Well it would be, if it weren't for the fact that the film's opening 15 minutes are some of the saddest and most moving I've seen. The young boy meets a girl, marries his sweet-heart, they grow old together and realise they can't have kids. They then get older and she gets ill and dies - without having any adventures in the form he had imagined. He is now left as a lonely old man holding a yellowed scrap book that he was going to fill with pictures of his adventures. I was holding back the tears by the end of this, lord knows what kids in the cinema thought (although I wonder if this bit would go over the heads of a lot of younger children).

The main character - now an old man - then embarks on an extraordinary adventure to find a location in South America that he had dreamed about as a child. He attaches innumerable balloons to his house and sets off in it as if it were a zeppelin. Along the way he makes friends with a boy, a hyperactive giant bird and a talking dog.

It's here that the magic of Pixar kicks in. I assume that the talking dog and massive colourful crazy bird are meant to be there for the kids, but I was laughing all the same. The old idea that the best cartoons are the ones that kids can laugh at while the parents enjoy the adult gags holds up here. But its not just adult humour that's going on, there is sadness in the story of an old man who has gone through life without achieving anything who clings to the memory of his wife as if it is all that will sustain him. As he searches for the promised land in South America he relinquishes the baggage of his former life and realises that his life did have a purpose, even if it wasn't what he expected it to be.

The film's final shot is tear-jerkingly beautiful, a final testament to just how good at telling stories Disney and Pixar are. Long live their partnership.