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Common sense media reviewers.

Pixar's stunning adventure is an upper for everyone.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Meant to entertain, but might inspire an interest

Carl and Russell become good friends and teach eac

Strong role models for multi-generational friendsh

There's some mild peril from thunderstorms hitting

This movie is part of the Disney-Pixar dynasty, wi

Two adults drink out of champagne flutes.

Educational Value

Meant to entertain, but might inspire an interest in travel and adventure.

Positive Messages

Carl and Russell become good friends and teach each other about responsibility, caring for nature, and the movie's main theme about "the spirit of adventure." Loyalty, grit, teamwork, and creative thinking are also themes.

Positive Role Models

Strong role models for multi-generational friendship and a successful marriage. Young Ellie befriends an otherwise lonely young Carl; they become best friends and later a married couple. He takes care of her after she grows ill, and he embarks on a journey to fulfill a lifelong dream of theirs. Russell is a spunky, determined kid. Characters demonstrate integrity, empathy, and gratitude.

Violence & Scariness

There's some mild peril from thunderstorms hitting the house, and a sad sequence that shows Ellie sick in the hospital and then Carl in a funeral home, surrounded by flowers. Both a real gun and a tranquilizer gun are fired at various characters. A house gets set on fire. Younger kids might be scared by some 3-D images that jump at them from the screen, as well as Muntz' dogs, which sometimes appear seemingly out of nowhere, growling and angry. Muntz tries to get rid of Carl and Russell, even if it means trying to kill them. One character falls to his death.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

This movie is part of the Disney-Pixar dynasty, with merchandise and other marketing tie-ins associated with the film.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Up is the second Pixar movie (after The Incredibles ) to receive a PG rating, mostly due to a few potentially frightening scenes involving a band of trained talking dogs trying to get rid of the protagonists, some moments where characters almost fall from a floating house, and some guns firing. That said, it's Disney/Pixar, so the violence is mild. Viewers should note that an early wordless sequence follows an emotional and potentially upsetting trajectory that could trigger questions about old age, illness, and death. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (248)
Kids say (263)

Based on 248 parent reviews

Very sad and emotionally intense

Might be intense for younger children, what's the story.

In UP, septuagenarian Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner ) and his wife Ellie had a shared dream since childhood: to visit exotic Paradise Falls in South America, a place the once-famous explorer Charles Muntz ( Christopher Plummer ) claimed was the most beautiful in the world. After Ellie dies, Carl decides to make his beloved late wife's dream come true and unveils hundreds of helium balloons to fly his house to Paradise Falls. Unbeknownst to Carl, a young Wildlife Explorer scout named Russell (Justin Nagai) is along for the ride. When they finally arrive, the odd couple discovers that Muntz is more interested in killing an elusive rare bird than living in paradise.

Is It Any Good?

Pixar has brought to life a multi-generational odd couple in a film that's visually stunning, surprisingly touching, and unsurprisingly delightful. After nine films, Pixar's legend is well known; it's the only studio with a perfect record both commercially (each of its releases has grossed more than $150 million) and critically. Up is no exception on the latter front, and considering the demand for family entertainment, it's sure to be a big hit money-wise, too.

The beginning of the film is an unexpected tearjerker following the entire marriage -- from first sight to widowhood -- of adventurous-at-heart Carl and Ellie Fredricksen. But he bulk of the story, as the trailer promises, is Carl and Russell's amazing skyward journey to Paradise Falls. Above the gorgeous and colorful animated vistas, Pixar's astonishing achievement is the sweet, funny, lasting relationship that it's odd-couple heroes share.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Up 's central relationship between Carl and Russell. What does the movie have to say about multigenerational friendships? What does a young boy teach an elderly man, and vice versa?

Kids: What kind of adventures do you dream of having? Does an adventure need to be somewhere far away?

How do the characters in Up demonstrate empathy and teamwork ? What about integrity and gratitude ? Why are these important character strengths ?

Movie Details

In theaters : May 29, 2009
On DVD or streaming : November 10, 2009
Cast : Christopher Plummer , Ed Asner , Jordan Nagai
Director : Pete Docter
Studio : Pixar Animation Studios
Genre : Family and Kids
Topics : Adventures , Friendship , Great Boy Role Models
Character Strengths : Empathy , Gratitude , Integrity , Teamwork
Run time : 98 minutes
MPAA rating : PG
MPAA explanation : some peril and action
Last updated : February 25, 2024

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Superb animation turns Disney’s tale of a grumpy old man and plump little boy into a touching and exciting flight of fancy

T he first golden age of Hollywood animation occurred in the late 1930s and early 40s when Walt Disney produced a succession of feature-length masterpieces beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and continuing with Pinocchio and Bambi . Then, in 1992, Beauty and the Beast , the best Disney cartoon for half a century, ushered in a second golden age.This has reached new artistic heights through the work of the Pixar company which became part of the Disney organisation, made necessary the creation of an Academy Award for best feature-length animated film and has helped give computers a good name. It's latest production, Up , made in 3D, is co-directed by Pete Docter and Bob Petersen, who have worked on most Pixar productions including both Toy Story films. It's one of its best: touching, funny and graphically exciting.

Pixar offers exceptional value, invariably opening with a dazzling short and closing with final credits that keep popular audiences (though not, I'm sad to say, film critics) sitting in their seats to the very end. Its last film, Wall-E , for instance, which Docter scripted, was preceded by Presto , a brilliantly frenetic five-minute cartoon directed by Douglas Sweetland, in which an Edwardian music hall magician is challenged by his fiendishly rebellious assistant, the rabbit Alec Kazam. I was almost exhausted with laughter and in need of a rest before Wall-E even started.

Pete Sohn's somewhat gentler Partly Cloudy , the curtain-raiser for Up , is a wholly delightful affair and tangentially related to the full-length film it precedes. Storks pick up bundles from anthropomorphic clouds to deliver to grateful earthly homes. Most are packed with cheerful pussycats, puppies and human babies. One stork, however, is tasked with carrying a succession of increasingly difficult passengers, including an aggressive goat, an alligator, a porcupine, a shark and an electric eel. These creatures do far more than ruffle his feathers until he stoically arms himself for the fray.

At the centre of Up is Carl Fredricksen (gruffly voiced by Ed Asner), a curmudgeonly widower and retired balloon salesman in late middle age. He's rather like the characters Walter Matthau specialised in or a less offensive version of Clint Eastwood's ex-factory worker in Gran Torino .

We first see him as a schoolboy, his youthful sense of adventure whetted by the appearance of his hero, Charles F Muntz (Christopher Plummer), in a black-and-white newsreel shown in a cinema back in the 1930s. Muntz travels the world in his airship, The Spirit of Adventure, visiting exotic places and collecting strange animals, and Carl and his spirited childhood sweetheart, Ellie, are determined to emulate him.

In a moving, dialogue-free sequence, Carl and Ellie marry, do up an old Victorian house and grow old together, but unfortunately cannot have children. They put money into a glass jar to fund their journey to the mythical Paradise Falls in South America, but they have to break it open to pay for a series of accidents and Ellie is dead before they have the chance to leave home. This echoes the story of George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life .

Then the film slips into Wizard of Oz mode when Carl's wooden frame-house (rather like the one behind the couple in the Grant Wood painting American Gothic ) is threatened by property developers. He accidentally injures a builder, is denounced as a danger to the public and faces a future in a retirement home.

Rebelling against his fate, Carl attaches several thousand toy balloons to the house and takes off into the blue yonder, bound for Paradise Falls. Unbeknown to him, an accidental stowaway, the nine-year-old Russell, a plump, dead keen Wilderness Explorer, a sort of Boy Scout, is aboard. He'd been hoping Carl would help him win a badge for helping old people. Eventually, the two bond on their way to Paradise Falls, and the irascible Carl discovers both the son he never had and his own youthful self by fulfilling the adventure he and Ellie didn't manage.

But after dragging their house across the rugged South American terrain in the manner of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo , they meet a friendly, 15-foot bird of paradise and have a disillusioning encounter with the man obsessed with tracking it down, the celebrated explorer Muntz. This obsessed sadist lives alone on his airship tethered in the jungle with slavering dogs he's taught to speak and to kill and thinks only of restoring his early fame.

Muntz seems largely inspired by the adventurer-film-maker Merian C Cooper who in the 1930s made two movies back to back using the same sets: King Kong and the thriller The Most Dangerous Game , about a reclusive genius, forerunner of the Bond villains, using a pack of ferocious dogs to hunt intruders on his domain. Both these films are evoked in Up , which features a number of inventive, superbly drawn chases on land and in the air that are as exciting as the best action movies of recent years.

Yet at the end, what we most remember are the characters: the lovable Carl, hiding behind his protective shell and cherishing his memories of Ellie; the eager, idealistic Russell; and the exotic bird; and Dug, the talking dog, who attach themselves to them. The moral is the familiar one that Dorothy discovered on returning from Oz – that the bluebird of happiness is to be found in your own back yard. But it is accompanied by another message, the one Muntz has failed to grasp – that fabulous creatures of nature should be left to live in their native habitats rather than snared and brought into captivity.

Animation in film
The Observer
Family films

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COMMENTS

Up
Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner), a 78-year-old balloon salesman, is about to fulfill a lifelong dream. Tying thousands of balloons to his house, he flies away to the South American wilderness. But ...
Up Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 248 ): Kids say ( 263 ): Pixar has brought to life a multi-generational odd couple in a film that's visually stunning, surprisingly touching, and unsurprisingly delightful. After nine films, Pixar's legend is well known; it's the only studio with a perfect record both commercially (each of its releases has grossed more ...
Up (2009)
User Reviews. Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) as a young quiet kid idolized explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) and his discovery of Paradise Falls. Ellie is much more animated and also a great fan of Muntz. Together they would marry and live their lives together until the day she dies.
Up
At the centre of Up is Carl Fredricksen (gruffly voiced by Ed Asner), a curmudgeonly widower and retired balloon salesman in late middle age. He's rather like the characters Walter Matthau ...
Up
Up is breathtaking in its imaginative detail and astonishing in its emotional range. Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 11, 2014. Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted ...