FamilyFilm

Up

2009 · 96 min · Animation, Comedy, Family

Directed by Pete Docter

IMDb 8.3🍅 98%Metacritic 88

“Change is in the air.”

Carl Fredricksen spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at age 78, life seems to have passed him by, until a twist of fate (and a persistent 8-year old Wilderness Explorer named Russell) gives him a new lease on life.

Why it's worth watching

Up is a masterpiece of storytelling that beautifully captures the depth of marital love, the pain of grief, and the unexpected joy of finding new purpose in serving others. The opening sequence alone is a profound testament to the beauty of lifelong commitment. It encourages viewers of all ages to look beyond their own losses and invest in the lives of the lonely and vulnerable.

What it praises

It praises the sanctity of marriage, lifelong commitment, intergenerational friendship, self-sacrifice, and the realization that the greatest adventure in life is loving and serving others.

For discernment

This is one of the few mainstream films that treats a whole marriage — courtship, shared dreams, a miscarriage, decades of quiet fidelity, and widowhood — as sacred and worth four wordless minutes, and it earns every tear honestly. That same opening is its heaviest weight: Ellie's miscarriage and the couple's childlessness are shown plainly and may cut deeply for anyone who has lost a child or struggles with infertility. Later the adventure turns surprisingly sharp — Muntz hunts the group with a rifle and a sword, and dogs are flung from a cliff — so it is more perilous than the balloons suggest. But the film's real argument is thoroughly good: that the grand adventure you were saving for turns out to be the ordinary love you already lived, and that a bitter old man is healed by binding himself to a lonely, fatherless boy. This one rewards a believer's attention rather than testing it.

Faith & familyEllie's miscarriage and the couple's childlessness are depicted tenderly but may be painful for those touched by pregnancy loss or infertility.
ViolenceThe villain Muntz pursues the heroes with a rifle and sword, and dogs are thrown from a cliff during the climax.