Opening day for a movie branded a “children’s film” by our culture is quite a sight to behold. There were lots of kids with not near as many parents, a couple of toddlers and at least one baby (who cried in the middle of the movie but wasn’t taken outside). We settled in and crossed our fingers that the noise would subside after the film actually started. I fully expected the kids to be the problem, but a group of teenagers turned out to be the problem initially. They were loud, giggly and boisterous, which is fine at a dance or even outside, but at a movie is totally inappropriate. Johnathan shushed them, someone in the row behind us did, too, and it took a threat to have them kicked out just as the movie was starting to get them to quiet down.

The initial noise issues aside, I was getting pretty excited about the movie. The short was sweet and well-animated, as all of Pixar’s pre-movie shorts have been to date. There’s not much to say about it, other than that I enjoyed it. I wasn’t able to fully immerse myself as I wanted to do, thanks to the noise coming from people all around. Nobody in that theater seemed to have the same interest in the short as we did. But after the noise died down and the lights fully dimmed, we were ready to fully take in Up for the first time. (Spoilers, coming your way!)

The first ten minutes of the movie were spent establishing what the trailers neglected to even hint at: the backstory and motive for the whole movie. We learn about adventurer Charles Munz, who finds a mysterious and exotic land called Paradise Falls (otherwise known as South America – Venezuela in particular), and about his rise to fame and subsequent downfall as the scientific community calls him a fraud. A young Carl Fredrickson finds the excitement and adventure exciting and dreams of traveling to Paradise Falls himself. He travels past a house (presumably on his way home), and happens upon a ramshackle old house, in which a young girl (Ellie) with the same aspirations is playing that she is traveling herself to the same exotic location. The story goes into a montage after that, through the lives of Carl and Ellie, starting with their marriage and culminating with her death. The adventuring dream is part of their life, but they never quite get to going on the grand adventures dreamed up in their childhood. And that’s where the meat of the movie starts.

As anyone who’s seen the trailer can probably piece together from here, he decides to lift his house with balloons (inspired by an unfortunate incident in which Carl hits a construction worker with his cane and is subsequently taken to court, then ends up being told to move to a retirement home), the not-a-boy-scout boy-scout child (Russell) ends up accidentally tagging along. The rest of the movie is a hijinks, where Russel and Carl end up completely out of their element, both with each other and with their surroundings.

Without giving away the rest of the movie, I can say that it’s hilarious and exciting, somewhat sinister in spots (as sinister as any Pixar film has really managed to get at this point, anyway), and completely heartwarming. It’s always lovely to see characters change and transform over the course of an hour and a half. I would say Pixar did it again. It’s not a run away smash hit in the way that some of the previous movies were.

Part of that problem may be caused by inadequate advertising. None of the trailers that I saw touched at all on the backstory or the motive for Carl’s need to elevate his home with balloons. As a result, we’re left with a lot of amusing moments plucked from the movies without any context whatsoever, a villain with a motive that we know nothing about who inexplicably wants to do something to or get something from our heroes, but we have no idea what. Honestly, thinking about it, I have no idea what would motivate anyone to see this film, other than an inherent love for Pixar and/or animated films. For once, I feel like Pixar has failed at successfully marketing their film in terms of getting a successful trailer out to the public. If Up does not do as well as some of their previous films, I don’t think it’s for lack of story or animation quality – those are both top-knotch as always, but for an inadequate trailer that just doesn’t do what a trailer is meant to do: get people into the theater to see that movie.

All in all, I enjoyed it. Pixar proves once again that they value story over eye candy and then they put the eye candy into the movie anyway. I will be going back to see it again, and I will definitely be seeing it in 3-D before it’s out of theaters. It’s a movie I can recommend with confidence.