(2009) This wildly acclaimed Pixar animation, in association with Disney Studios, from director Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson, who collaborated on the story (with Thomas McCarty) and screenplay, though often cleverly conceived and inventively humorous, just didn't lift me off my seat. As with Wall-E, I enjoyed the beginning, but the adventures in South America become another fantastic series of violent escapades.

Seven decades before the principal story, young Carl Fredricksen, wearing a helmet and goggles and holding a balloon by its string, after watching a newsreel of his intrepid hero Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer) being accused of fraud, meets gap-toothed Ellie, another Muntz fan, in an abandoned house (on the front door is the name of Muntz's dirigible, Spirit of Adventure), who makes him the only other member of her club by pinning a grape-soda bottle cap on his chest as a badge.

Sharing her "My Adventure Book" with Carl (who'd broken his arm), Ellie declares that she's going where Muntz is going, to Paradise Falls in South America; she then makes Carl promise that he'll take her there in a blimp. In a sweet, silent sequence of scenes, they eventually get married, but are unable to have children, and grow old together (Carl with his large, black-framed glasses and squarish head looks like Eugene Levy as a young man and later as a white-haired Spencer Tracy), failing in their efforts to save enough money for their planned trip together.

At 78, a crotchety, stay-at-home widower, Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) refuses to sell his property ("Tell your boss he can have our house, when I'm dead") - his home sitting in the middle of the city's construction project - answers a knock at the door to find a blimpish, eight-year-old, Asian-American kid, Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai), in his Wilderness Explorer outfit, in need of an elderly person he can assist in some way to earn a final merit badge to become a senior Wilderness Explorer.

After sending Russell on a wild snipe chase, Carl gets into trouble by striking a construction worker on the head with his walker; the court declares Carl a public nuisance, requiring that he be removed from his house to the Shady Oaks retirement home. "What do I do now, Ellie?" he asks the air.

Filling hundreds of balloons with helium, Carl and his house rise off the ground on the way to South America, using sails and a compass to direct his air voyage. Again he answers a knock at the door, finding Russell, an accidental stowaway, who'd chased a long-tailed "snipe" under the house, terrified on the front porch. During a terrible storm, Russell successfully steers the floating house to safety.

With Paradise Falls in view, Carl and Russell on the ground in rope harnesses begin pulling the house suspended in the sky like a huge float in a parade toward the location where Ellie had shown in a drawing where she'd hoped they would settle.

The path to this destination takes them through a jungle where they encounter a brilliantly colored giant bird, Kevin (so named by Russell, who feeds it chocolate candy bars, though it's actually a rare mother fowl), being pursued by dogs with special collars that allow them to speak in English. One of the canines, Dug (voiced by Bob Peterson), treated dismissively by Alpha and the others, regards Carl as his master and pleads with Kevin: "Please be my prisoner."

Forced to follow the pack of dogs back to their brainy, illustrious master, Carl and Russell are welcomed and received as guests. What a surprise, and what astonishments await as the house continues to hover overhead like a huge gondola beneath a colorful bunch of levitated grapes.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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