As a boy, Carl Fredrickson is a huge fan of world-renowned explorer Charles Muntz. However, on his return trip from a South American location called Paradise Falls, Muntz is criticized and ultimately disgraced over accusations that he faked the skeleton of a massive bird he supposedly discovered. Angered, Muntz returns to South America in his famed blimp, vowing never to return until he has captured the bird alive and brought it back.

Carl, meanwhile, meets another eager young explorer named Ellie, who reveals to him her plan of one day taking her play fort to Paradise Falls. Their young friendship blossoms into romance, and they are married. The years pass, and they try to save up in order to fulfill their childhood dreams of going to Paradise Falls. However, life never allows them to do this. Finally, after a long life together, Ellie dies, leaving Carl alone.

We now begin the story proper, with the elderly Carl still living in the same house, diligently going about the same household tasks that he and Ellie used to do together. But times are changing – a construction company has purchased all the land around Carl’s house. They keep bugging him to sell to them, but Carl refuses to leave his home.

One day, Carl receives a knock on his door – it is an eager young Wilderness Explorer named Russell, who wants to assist Carl in order to receive the last badge he needs before becoming a Senior Wilderness Explorer. Carl tells him to go and find a “snipe” that has been bothering him, and Russell eagerly runs off.

Carl now sees a construction vehicle back into his mailbox. Furious, he runs out to retrieve the mailbox, and in the tussle with a construction worker, he strikes the worker on the head. This leads to a court hearing, which declares Carl to be a public menace. He must now leave his home and go to live at a retirement home.

Carl is devastated by this, but, while packing to go, he finds Ellie’s old adventure book, which contained her plans to go to live at Paradise Falls. Carl decides to try and fulfill this childhood dream of theirs. He attaches a ton of balloons to his house and floats away, bound for South America. To his dismay, while airborne he discovers that he has accidentally brought along Russell, who had pursued what he thought was a snipe underneath Carl’s porch right before take-off.

Carl’s hope of landing to get Russell home is dashed when they enter a storm cloud. When they emerge, they land across from Paradise Falls. Determined to reach it, Carl ties the floating house to himself via the garden hose, and they begin to walk the house over to their destination. Along the way, they meet up with a gigantic bird, which Russell names Kevin, as well as a dog named Doug, who is able to talk because of a special collar.

It turns out, however, that Doug is part of a pack of dogs hunting Kevin. The other dogs catch up with Carl and Russell and, although Kevin escapes, the dogs bring them back to their master, who turns out to be none other than Charles Muntz. He has remained in Paradise Falls all these years, desperately trying to capture the bird, but he has so far failed. At first, he is very hospitable to Carl and Russell, but when Russell accidentally lets slip that they have met Kevin, Muntz suspects them of having come to steal his bird. He threatens them, revealing that many other people have come to try and steal his bird, but that he has killed them all.

They manage to escape, assisted by Doug, and try to help Kevin get back to her babies. However, Muntz tracks them down and captures the bird, flying off in his dirigible. Russell insists that they need to go save Kevin, but Carl, desperate to reach Paradise Falls before the balloons run out of helium, insists that it is none of his concern. He continues the journey, reaching the falls the next day. Russell is distraught, and steals some of the balloons, using these and Carl’s leaf blower to fly away in pursuit of Muntz’s dirigible.

Carl tries to soak in the joy of having achieved his goal, but in looking at Ellie’s adventure book, he realizes that she has already filled in the section “Things I’m Going to Do”, not with the adventures that she had planned to have at Paradise Falls, but with the adventures she did have with Carl – pictures of their wedding, their excursions, their daily life. Carl realizes that there are more important things than fulfilling the dream of living at Paradise Falls. He empties the house of furniture, making it light enough to fly again, and he sets off after Russell and the dirigible.

Together, Carl, Russell, and Doug manage to board the dirigible. In the ensuing chaos, Muntz falls to his death, and the house floats away and sinks out of sight. Using the dirigible, they return home, where Carl is present to pin the badge on Russell’s sash at the Wilderness Explorer ceremony. The movie ends with the two of them eating ice cream and counting cars, just like Russell used to do with his father.

Analysis

Carl sets out on his adventure because of a desire to fulfill the childhood promise he made to Ellie, that they would eventually go to Paradise Falls. Faced with the potential loss of the home he built with Ellie, he decides that he is going to make this effort. Carl is thus a man who is tied to a certain dream – the dream that he and Ellie had shared. In addition, he remains extremely attached to all those things that, by association, remind him of his time with Ellie – the furniture, the house, the mailbox, etc. In a sense, these things help him keep Ellie “alive”, and when he is faced with the possibility of losing it all, he decides that he needs to seek out and fulfill their childhood dream. He feels obliged to do so by his promise to Ellie, and by his remembrance of all the adventures she had hoped to have at Paradise Falls.

Because of his attachments, Carl becomes a bit of a grumpy recluse. All he wants is for things to be left as they were, and for him to be left in peace. Hence, he deceives Russell about the snipe in order to keep Russell from bothering him. Also, he over-reacts to the worker who is trying to fix the mailbox, and thus ends up injuring the man.

Once he has reached his destination, Carl remains focused solely on attaining his goal. He takes little interest in Russell (at one point he tells the boy that “I’m stuck with you!”), and no interest in Russell’s new-found friends of Kevin and Doug. Although he slowly starts to warm to Russell once he learns about Russell’s problems with his father, Carl remains firmly focused on fulfilling the dream that he has decided needs fulfilling.

This is shown most clearly when Kevin is finally captured by Muntz. Russell pleads with Carl to save Kevin, but Carl refuses, declaring that the affair has nothing to do with him. He chooses the house and the fulfillment of his dream over Kevin.

However, once he achieves his goal, he is unable to be satisfied. Something is clearly missing. Then he makes his discovery – Ellie has completed the section of her book meant for the adventures she would have at Paradise Falls, filling it instead with pictures of her life with Carl. Clearly, she did not spend her life yearning for the unfulfilled dream of her childhood, but instead found her “adventures” with her husband and the life they had together.

Carl realizes that he doesn’t need the house, the memorabilia, even the trip to Paradise Falls in order to fulfill his promise to Ellie – he has already fulfilled it, and she has fulfilled hers to him, through their life spent together in love. He doesn’t need all of these material things to keep Ellie “alive”, because what matters most is not the things that remind him of her, but the relationship they shared. Carl’s insight is expressed when he empties the house of all the furniture – the chairs that he and Ellie used to sit in, even pictures of her. All of it can be discarded, because, as important as these things are to him, he recognizes that there are other things even more important, such as the relationship he had with Ellie, and the relationship he has begun to form with Russell.

This brings out a second important element of the movie. Carl and Ellie wanted children, but were unable to have any. This realization led them to place many of their dreams into the hope of going to Paradise Falls. Thus they try to save up for the trip, but they never get around to it, other things being more important.

Just as the dream of going to Paradise Falls replaced, for them, their prior dream of having children, now Carl finds that he needs to replace his dream of bringing the house to Paradise Falls with his relationship with Russell. Carl finally finds, in a sense, the son he had originally wanted but could never get. Once he embraces this new role, he finds himself able to let go of the material things that had been substitutes for human affection in his heart. He is able to say, when his house floats away at the end, that “it’s just a house.” Before, the house had seemed necessary to keep Ellie “alive”, along with their shared dream of going to Paradise Falls. Living in the house and going to the falls had been almost like having Ellie still with him. What he learns, however, is that the human relationships in his life are more important – his relationship with Ellie, which was the true fulfillment of their dreams, and now his relationship with Russell, who becomes the son Carl never had. Thus, what began as a journey for the fulfillment of dream becomes a journey of self-discovery, and, just like Ellie and Carl’s marriage, this self-discovery turns out to be far more truly fulfilling than the dream of reaching Paradise Falls.

Questions for discussion

1. Ellie and Carl’s shared interest in exploration and Paradise Falls becomes the means of bringing them together, and then remains with them throughout their marriage and even after Ellie’s death. It then becomes the motivation for Carl in his journey. What do you think is the significance of the fact that this dream ultimately remains unfulfilled? What do you think is the importance of this dream for Carl?

2. What do you think Carl has learned through his journey? Think about one possibility and decide whether you agree or disagree – that Carl has learned to value human relationships over the material reminders of these relationships. If you agree, then explain how you think Carl came to this discovery. If you disagree, then what do you think Carl’s insight has been?

Up. (2009). The Movie Database (TMDb). https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/14160-up