Up up & away!

Up is a very nice, soft, gentle romantic comedy, heart touching story of a couple Carl & Ellie, It’s a sweet story which tells how far a husband can go to keep the promise made to his beloved wife, the promise has relevance & meaning even when she is long gone, a promise made a to a childhood sweetheart fulfilled at old age. I learnt what fatherhood meant after watching ‘Life is beautiful’, in which a father sacrifices his life to save his son’s. Probably this redefines my assumption of what a husband & home means & the way he cares for his wife’s feelings & that he can not only go an extra mile every time but fly thousands of miles to keep a promise made long ago which perhaps may even be forgotten. A small kid has a dream more of a fantasy to become an explorer, go to the undiscovered land where no human has ever gone, see & learn new things sort of obsession. He runs into a like minded girl who welcomes him in her explorer club, well only two members in their club Carl & Ellie. They are simply so adorable with their helmets & circular goggles etc. They fall in love & get married & then life becomes full of mundane routine activities, Carl being a balloon man makes a happy living, but not enough to afford an adventure trip to South America, that was the time when that land was an undiscovered one. They pool in money to go to their adventure camp several times, but that gets spent in times of crisis, they kind of let go of their long cherished explorer dream, well not really let it go for ever. Ellie tells Carl to cross his heart whenever she speaks of the adventure trip she wants to experience paradise falls in South America, an unexplored land in wilderness the photo of which she ripped from library book. Well I don’t know what Ellie really meant by crossing heart but understood Carl’s version of the same when he does keep up the promise of having their house on paradise falls, by making an attempt, flying a thousand miles into the unknown in his house tied with 50,000 helium balloons, reminded me of promise by Forrest Gump who tells, “A promise is a promise lieutenant Diane”, a promise made to beloved, fulfilled no matter what it takes no matter how far you need to go….

It’s so good to see everyday when you clean a windows glass from one side & you see your wife cleaning from the other. But from some day when you don’t get to see her on the other side of window you realize that how much you miss her & life becomes really dull! Ellie leaves Carl behind, who in his old age tries to fulfill her dream of having their house on top of paradise falls, a land undiscovered in South America. So, he flies in his house with 50,000 helium filled balloons enough to lift his house & fly. He is accompanied by naughty kid Russell who shares the same dream of becoming an explorer. They encounter numerous problems on their way & finally house finds its way on top of paradise falls just as Ellie painted & aspired. It’s really wonderful to know when Carl goes through the picture book of Ellie, expecting it to be blank as they never made to paradise falls when she was alive as it was supposed to contain the adventures of paradise falls, instead it contained photos of their marriage, & life thereafter, time spent along with each other etc. Life with Carl was an adventure for Ellie indeed.

It’s really amazing how they fill the expressions & emotions in animation. You will instantly fall in love with the characters in the movie which are almost like teddy bears. Altogether a must watch.