Sometimes we build our dreams like snowmen, in the morning glint of February. We build them high, snow upon snow upon snow, until they tower over our heads and seem to stand like glistening stone. But then the spring starts its work, diminishing our gleaming dreams drop by drop. They disappear in tiny rivulets of ice-cold water, by imperceptible inches, until all that's left is a ring of greener grass.
 Never mind that this is an animated "kids' movie." This is the philosophical stuff of Pixar's Up.
For you see, Carl Fredricksen had just such a dream. He and his beloved wife, Ellie, planned one day to visit Paradise Falls, a mysterious locale in South America filled with cliffs and waterfalls and adventure. When they were children, Carl promised they would go there, cementing the deal with a somber crosscut motion over his heart. Throughout their marriage, the promise of Paradise danced in front of them.
But life kept intruding. They'd raid their Paradise Falls fund for flat tires, for home repairs, for all manner of everyday hiccups. Their hair turned gray, then white, and when Carl finally bought their tickets to Paradise, Ellie was too sick to go. Then ... she was gone, leaving Carl with a houseful of memories, a heart full of grief and two plane tickets he'll never use.
But a promise is a promise, and Carl had crossed his heart. So he loads his house with helium balloons and rips its thousands of pounds of wood and metal and carpet right off its foundation, floating out of the city and into adventure. He has just one destination in mind—Paradise Falls, and he'll slice through the air until he reaches its hallowed—
Knock, knock.
Carl walks to the door and finds a boy named Russell, a Wilderness Scout with a sash full of merit badges and a brain full of chatter, cowering on his swaying porch.
"Hello, Mr. Fredricksen," the boy says, clinging to the siding for dear life. "Please let me in."
"No," Carl says. And he slams the door. But then he opens it again.
So begins a new sort of dream for Carl, though he doesn't know it yet. He still thinks he's saving his snowman—his dream, his promise, his adventure, his treasure. But what he's about to find out is that while there's no denying that snowmen are cool and all, what's really important is underneath—the lush circle of spring grass left behind. Green. Growing. Living.
:: Review
"A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves," wrote Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri. "Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger."
Up is exactly the kind of thing Okri was talking about. It transcends cartoon. It transcends film. It is a story, and a story in the word's best, most mythical sense—a narrative that educates and entertains, a fairy tale that can make your heart larger. It makes me wonder, again, why more people aren't making films like this. And I'm beginning to think they simply don't know how.
Pixar, though, has been making worthwhile movies for nearly 15 years now, and the stories keep getting stronger. Up's sense of literature and symbol could be studied on many a college campus, and its themes would not be out of place in a church service. While it doesn't deal in theology or spirituality, its morals are from time-tested biblical bedrock: Keep your promises. Treasure people, not things. Spend time with your kids. Honor your elders. Respect. Trust. Love.
And it's a gut-busting hoot to boot.
A postscript: I'll have to spoil a rather major plot point as I write the next few paragraphs—but it's worth it, I promise. In many (most) modern kid flicks, young audiences are told to "follow their dreams." This is a message that simultaneously resonates and repels. While there's real value in dreaming big, we shouldn't let those dreams sidetrack us from what God has in mind for us: As painful as it can be, sometimes our dreams need to melt.
In Up, we see a dreamer disappointed. A dreamer who feels betrayed by life's circumstances. His eyes tear up when he thinks of Ellie's apparently empty scrapbook—the one that was to hold pictures from all their daring adventures together, the one in which Ellie wrote, as a child, "Stuff I'm going to do."
But then, as he sits in his gray, lifeless house, now settled snugly beside Paradise Falls—a dream too long in coming—he opens the book and finds ... pictures. And more pictures. And still more pictures. Carl. Ellie. Ellie. Carl. Weddings. Car trips. Quiet days at home. Pictures and pictures and pictures.
On the last page is a note from Ellie. "Thanks for the adventure," it reads. "Now go out and get a new one!"
Few of us live our lives exactly as we plan them. Some of our dreams go unfulfilled. Some of them are unfulfilling.
Yet even in the midst of final exams, trips to the grocery store and even tragedies we can never prepare for, we're still impossibly, gloriously blessed. Sometimes we just need to forget the snowmen that've melted and look at the living, lush grass underneath.
Up helps us do that.
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