Film

Up

Name: Up
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Family, Adventure
Released: 2009
Cast: Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson, Delroy Lindo

Up is Pixar at its most emotionally reckless: a wordless ten-minute marriage-and-loss montage followed by a house lifted skyward on thousands of balloons. What follows is a lighter, funnier adventure story about a grieving widower, an over-eager Wilderness Explorer, and a talking dog, but that opening never lets you forget what's underneath the jokes. Good for anyone who wants animation that earns its tears honestly.

TMDb rating

8.0

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The same studio, the same trick of making you weep before a single word is spoken, this time pointed at loneliness and love instead of grief. Gorgeous, strange, tender science fiction disguised as a kids' film.

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Coco2017

Another Pixar adventure built on a foundation of real mortality, this time wrapped in Día de los Muertos color and music. It's about memory and being forgotten, and it hits just as hard as Carl's staircase.

But Very music-driven — if you're not won over by the songs early, the emotional peaks land less hard.

Inside Out2015

Pixar turning an internal, unshowy kind of loss — growing up, losing a version of yourself — into a colourful, kinetic adventure. Same trick as Up: big emotions smuggled inside a fun premise.

But Younger kids can find the sadness genuinely upsetting rather than just bittersweet; it doesn't soften much.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Harold and Maude1971

Both are stories where an old person's appetite for life outpaces everyone younger around them — Carl's balloons and Maude's stolen cars are the same gesture.

A death-obsessed young man befriends a 79-year-old woman who treats every day like a heist. It's funnier, weirder, and more subversive than anything Pixar would dare, but it's making the same argument Up makes: that a long life closing in on you is exactly the moment to fly a plane, steal a car, or defy gravity.

But Its dark comedy about death and its very 1970s attitudes toward age and romance will unsettle some viewers expecting cosiness.

How to Train Your Dragon2010

Swap the old man for a teenager and the dog for a dragon, and you've got the same warm engine: an unlikely bond between a lonely soul and a creature who shouldn't trust them.

But More straightforward boy's-adventure than Up — less interested in grief, more interested in flight and spectacle.

The Incredibles2004

Brad Bird's other great Pixar film, about a life that once felt bigger than the one you're living now. Funnier and faster than Up, but it shares that ache for lost purpose.

But Superhero action framing means it's a very different rhythm — more punchy set pieces, less quiet.

Finding Nemo2003

An anxious parent and an unlikely companion cross an ocean together — the emotional shape is nearly identical to Up, just with fins instead of balloons.

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Paddington 22017

Impossibly warm, genuinely funny, and sneakily about kindness as a radical act. If Up made you well up, this will finish the job in the nicest possible way.

But It's gentler and lower-stakes — no real adventure-movie momentum, just pure, concentrated sweetness.

Despicable Me2010

A grumpy loner's plans get derailed by children he never wanted, and he ends up loving them more than the plan. Broader and sillier than Up, but the shape rhymes.

But Much cruder comedy, less interested in melancholy — closer to slapstick than to grief.

The Iron Giant1999

A lonely boy and an enormous, unlikely companion, animated with real tenderness under Brad Bird before he ever got to Pixar. Quietly devastating in the same key as Up.

But Traditional hand-drawn animation and a Cold War setting will feel dated to viewers used to CGI polish.

Beginners2011

The same actor, decades of life examined instead of villainy — Plummer playing an old man discovering himself rather than one clinging to a lost dream.

Christopher Plummer — the sinister explorer Charles Muntz in Up — plays a tender, funny, deeply moving elderly father coming out as gay late in life, in a quiet indie drama about family and reinvention. It's the same actor's voice, but every ounce of menace has been replaced with warmth.

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My Neighbor Totoro1988

Both pair a child processing real anxiety with a huge, odd, loyal creature — Totoro is Dug without the talking, and just as much of a gift.

Studio Ghibli's gentlest film: two young sisters, a new home, a sick mother, and a giant forest spirit who becomes their strange, silent companion. No adventure plot, no jeopardy — just wonder sitting right next to worry, exactly like Up's quieter moments with Russell.

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