Monsters, Inc. (2001) — PICK
Up (2009) — PICK

 

Inside Out writer-director Pete Docter’s first two Pixar films are also gems. His first, Monsters, Inc., blends odd-couple buddy humor, zany creature design, childhood fears and a modified “Ransom of Red Chief” scenario that turns into a touching two-men-and-a-baby avuncular relationship with a wildly inventive action finale.

Billy Crystal and frequent animation voice actor John Goodman star as Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan, a pair of ace scare-floor workers at Monsters, Inc., a corporation in the monster world that generates energy from scream power collected by monsters invading children’s bedrooms at night.

The film’s conceit is that the monsters are just as scared of children as children are of them — but when Mike and Sully encounter an adorable tyke they nickname Boo, their misconceptions begin to break down. Steve Buscemi co-stars as villainous Randall, a reptilian monster with his own agenda.

The dazzling climax, in which the heroes and villain pursue one another through a vast, cavernous warehouse full of magic doors on conveyor rails, remains an all-time highlight.

Up is an ostensibly more realistic story, yet in its way it is even more wonderfully weird than Monsters, Inc. It is a soaring fantasy, an intergenerational odd-couple buddy movie and a sharply observed exploration of widower grief.

Up is perhaps most beloved for its celebrated prologue, with its silent-film homage to marital love. In a few minutes we watch childhood sweethearts Carl and Ellie marry and grow old together, glimpse a lifetime of joys and disappointments and finally witness Carl’s grief and loneliness as Ellie dies. Up touches glancingly on the heartbreak of miscarriage and the inability to have children, as well as the anxious stubbornness of the elderly to cling to whatever independence they can, to remain connected to familiar places and things. For Carl (Ed Asner), that means clinging to the bungalow that he and Ellie shared, with all of its memories and associations. At last Carl makes the first madly precipitous choice of his life: He will honor Ellie’s unfulfilled lifelong wish to visit South America as best he can by using the lifting power of helium balloons to fly the bungalow.

Much of the power of Up lies in the floating bungalow’s astonishingly subtle power as a fluid metaphor for various stages of Carl’s grief. See my full review at DecentFilms.com for more.