So... Kevin is a girl!

Up! (2009)
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Animation, Comedy, Adventure.

Hollywood comes home to adventure as it never has before - with a rotund boy named Russel, a distinctly German-named Karl Freidrichssen (and German-looking too), a fancy feathered bird named Kevin, who is a girl and Doug, the talking dog. Throw in a flying house (often referred to as the floating house) and a childhood-superhero-turned-obsessive-compulsive-psycho-villain, you are bound to be left laughing; but beware - for the moments where you do not, you might just be crying.

To borrow a line from the movie, I am getting quite ahead of myself; let me begin at the beginning. Or better, go a step back-er! :) Partly Cloudy is one of the finest animated short-films that I have seen. Please YouTube it. It is awesome in so many levels. I am surprised at the fact that I can still be surprised, for it is common knowledge that Pixar has made some really good short-animated-features. This is one has both a great idea and a warm heart going for it.

Now to the movie itself: technically, it is awesome. I did not expect Pixar to out-do the wordless romance of Wall-E and definitely not so soon. They have gone one step further, by matching the wordless romance in under ten minutes - the first ten of the movie at that. When everything seems bleak - the story magically flips back on to its feet, and lo behold! Flies away. Tied to a thousand colored balloons. The journey, despite its evident literality, ensures that the obvious metaphor does not become a cliche but evolves into an allegory. Simpler put, we do not just enjoy the movie like hell, but also get a damn good thought to take home.

I am NOT going to give the story in a nutshell; not because there is a single central surprise, on revealing which the movie falls flat - but because I do not want you to bear a grudge against me even for a moment AFTER seeing the movie, thinking that Saravanan spoiled the movie just a little bit by telling me something. But in case you are one of those who wanna know! It is a loves story about dogs, balloons, Paradise Falls and a badge. And ooh! ooh! I almost forgot, about Kevin being a girl...!

There is a strong Dahl-ian feel to the movie - in both facing head-on the dark realities of life (even in a story set mainly for a younger audience) and introducing a sudden single fantastic event which gives the protagonist to change the course of things. Despite the improbability of the first magical event, the remaining part of the fantasy strictly adheres to a very-human-logic. The movie also underlines a theme which we tackle oftener in everyday life - the growing gap between generations and how dangerously irreconcilable they are becoming. What really impressed me was that there was no ordinary ending where the bad-guy simply changes heart.

Instead of summing up this conversation saying that the movie was simply awesome (though it really was awesome), I would like to leave you with my favorite scene from the movie. When Carl discovers young (annoying) Russell aboard the flying house, he gets a momentary vision where he lowers Russell to one of the buildings with a few kerchiefs tied together, and slips. Russell just makes the observation that he could almost touch the buildings with his hands. This scene cracked me up - for it was both grown up and juvenile - and hilarious at both levels.