Let me be clear: I judges stories on how they move me.
If a story makes me laugh or cry, if it takes me to a time past or a place completely imaginary, if it makes my hands sweat or forces me to sit up and say “What just happened?”—then that’s a story I want to experience. Usually more than once.
But if one story does all of that…well, then I’m just not content getting it from Netflix, checking it out from the library, or even owning the paperback. If a story does all of that to me, I’m ready to go out, slap down fifteen bucks for the DVD or thirty for the hardcover, thereby declaring it a masterpiece.
(Attention Pixar: You’ll be getting whatever percentage you get from my purchase of Up very shortly.)
Up is, without a doubt, one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. Indeed, one of the best I’ve seen. Ever.
First: I rarely laugh out loud when watching a movie alone. It just doesn’t happen. Groundhog Day is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen, and I’ll laugh at all the right parts when watching it with another person or in a group. But when I’m alone? It doesn’t even make me crack a smile.
But with Up, I not only found myself cracking a smile, I found myself laughing. Not chuckling softly. Not sniggering. Laughing—out loud—uncontrollably.
For those who’ve seen the movie, the three moments that made my laugh hysterically were (1) “Squirrel!” which I knew from the trailer but was still, in context of the scene, a laugh-out-loud moment; (2) Alpha’s squeaky voice; and (3) the “Cone of Shame” — which really did me in.
(If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about; if not, I don’t want to ruin it for you by describing it any further.)
Second: the story is as poignant as The Wheel of Time is long.
It touched me in an unexpected way. Like most people, I have unfulfilled childhood dreams. One of them is writing—a dream that came to me when I was eleven, in the sixth grade. For the past twenty-five years I’ve been—pursuing isn’t the right word, more like limping after—this dream. Write for a little while, don’t write for a long while. Now, on the threshold of thirty-six, I feel like I wasted my life.
Yet, have I? I’m married to a great woman; we’re deeply in love and are the joy of each other’s lives. I have four wonderful children. We’re a happy family. As Up reminds us, our lives often end up being more wonderful than our childhood dreams.
Of course, it’s far too simple—and wrongheaded—to say Up is about family. It is, but then again, it isn’t. More than family, Up is about the need to reassess our lives once our lives chance. We can’t live in the past. Period. We have to press on, be willing to cross new thresholds, look for other ways to find meaning.
That’s the message of Up.
But wait a minute, you say, aren’t you still pursuing your dream of being a writer? Didn’t you learn anything from Up?
The answer is: Yes—to both questions.
I can pursue my writing dreams because my life circumstances allow me to pursue writing. But if those circumstances were to change . . . well, I’ll probably need to re-watch Up to remember it’s lesson.
Which will won’t be problem, since I’ll own the DVD of this brilliant movie.
