Up (U)

FOR crying out loud, Pixar. This is getting a bit stupid.

Ten films you've done now. Ten films in 14 flamin' years. And not ONE of them has been anything less than brilliant.

Toy Story. Monsters, Inc. The Incredibles. Ratatouille. WALL-E . . .

By rights, at least a couple of them should have been big old multi-coloured, ball-blazing duds. But they've all been fab, and this latest effort, Up, is no exception.

How do they do it? Alien conspiracy or pact with Beelzebub would be my two first guesses.

But it's possible, just possible, that this studio simply understands animation better than anyone else on the planet.

And hey - at least they're challenging themselves.

After basing their early films around instantly lovable characters such as toys and fuzzy monsters, they went on to tackle less appealing creatures, such as vermin (Ratatouille) and a space bin (WALL-E), and still managed to win over the hearts of millions.

And with their new movie, they're pushing their luck even further.

The star of Up is Mr Carl Fredricksen, a 78-year-old widower who hates the world and spends every day brooding about his dead wife. Good grief. Who's starring in your next one, Pixar? A paedophile? Swine flu? (Alien conspiracy or pact with Beelzebub, I'm telling you).

At the start of Up We join Carl (voiced by Edward Asner) as a young kid, and the first ten minutes quickly spool through his life thus far.

Weepy

We see his early dreams of becoming a world-famous explorer, how he meets his childhood sweetheart and later wife Ellie (a sweet voice cameo from director Pete Docter's daughter Elizabeth) then the couple's humble life together.

Now, I'll freely admit to crying at the end of movies more often than a grown heterosexual male should. But this is the first time in living memory that I've cried at the START of one.

And not just me, either. The entire cinema was squirting more liquid than Old Faithful on a busy day.

It's quite possibly - no word of a lie - the single most moving animation sequence since Mufasa's wildebeest mishap in The Lion King.

To make an audience care THIS much about a character in less time than it takes Emmerdale to get to its first ad break takes serious skill.

But somehow, Docter and his co-writer/director Bob Peterson have managed it.

(Aliens. Devil pact. Only two possibilities. Let's move on.)

Feeling out of place in the modern world, and desperate to fulfill his lifetime ambition of travelling to the South American waterfall Paradise Falls, Carl - a former balloon- seller - rigs up his house with helium-filled inflatables and takes off into the wild blue yonder. But little does he realise that at the moment of lift-off, a helpful-to-a-fault eight-year-old wilderness explorer called Russell (Jordan Nagai) is standing on the doorstep.

The dreamy, drifty beauty of the first act - as Carl and Russell cruise through the sky in their airborne cottage - is, quite simply, stunning.

Adults at the showing I went to were staring at the screen like gob-smacked, slack-jawed five-year-olds.

As were the five-year-olds.

Then the action-packed second and third acts - when Carl and Russell land in the jungles of South America and meet a talking dog called Dug, a rare bird called Kevin and a gentleman explorer voiced by Christopher Plummer - up Up from visually stunning to one of the best family movies of the decade.

Brilliant

The talking dog stuff in particular is hysterical, and sets up one of the most brilliantly simple - and brilliantly hilarious - film gags of the year.

Plus the animation is as good as ever been produced by Pixar - or anyone else, for that matter.

From that first "wow" moment when the balloons lift Carl's bungalow bunga-high, to the top-notch character design (Carl's literally a square, while Kevin the bird's slapstick sequences are the equal of a Roadrunner cartoon), everything has been made with an almost terrifying amount of care and attention.

I can't gush about Up enough. (I've given it a good crack, though.)

All you need to know is that it's a must-see, whatever your age. Plus it's screening in 3D. And anyone who tries to claim this is a gimmick after seeing it has misunderstood either the entire film or the concept of eyes.

Up is a soaring (ha!) achievement, visionary entertainment, and one of the very best films of the year - animated or otherwise.

So thank you, aliens, Satan, Pixar, whoever. Regardless of where this slice of utter genius came from, I'm just happy to watch it.

OUT FRIDAY

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