Up

• Uncut Film review: Up
• DIRECTED BY Pete Docter
• STARRING THE VOICES OF Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson

Gone are the days when Pixar films could be dismissed as handsome confections for kids. The studio’s last film WALL•E was a bleak science-fiction vision in the true Kubrick spirit, and the 3D extravaganza Up is… a bittersweet contemplation of ageing and mortality?

You could read it that way - or alternatively see this brisk fantasy as a surreal, sweet-natured comedy about a cranky old man, a flying house and some talking dogs.

Ed Asner provides the voice of elderly balloon seller Carl, who once shared a dream of airborne escape with his late wife. Hitching his balloons to his house, Carl flies off with a bedazzled young Wilderness Explorer (Jordan Nagai) to a lost domain, where they encounter a villainous air ace (Christopher Plummer) and a winningly goofy 13-foot-bird named Kevin.

The humour gets weirder as it goes on and it’s among the lightest of Pixar’s films, but the first 20 minutes offer the saddest, most poignant sequence seen in an animation film since Bambi’s mother died.

JONATHAN ROMNEY

Rating: 4 / 10

(Opens October 9/ Cert U/ 89 mins)