Mark Simon is head-over-heels for Disney/Pixar's Up.

I had the pleasure of seeing Up two weeks before it opened. Oddly, I was less enthused about Up than any other Pixar film. I never got the feeling there was much of a story to Up. The marketing made the concept seem rather light. I asked around and the other people in my office didn't have any idea what it was about either.

As I sat in the theater, though, I was first treated to Partly Cloudy, Pixar's latest short. Not that I've seen too many cloud animations, but this was easily the best. The characters were so soft, yet were still tangible characters. And like all Pixar shorts, it told a wonderfully touching story with no dialogue. Fantastic.

Then the main event began. Up begins as a love story. We live through Carl Frederickson's (Ed Asner) marriage to Ellie. Their romance is told in wonderful silent storytelling. I'm a huge fan of any story that can be told without dialogue, or as Syndrome from The Incredibles would say, "Monologuing."

Once Carl decides to take off on an unfulfilled adventure, the true buddy picture begins. The 78-year-old curmudgeon Carl flies to South America with 9-year-old dim stowaway wilderness explorer Russell, voiced by newcomer Jordan Nagai.

Up is an uproariously funny adventure. I found myself laughing, along with the rest of the audience, continuously throughout the movie. This is Pixar's funniest film since Monster's, Inc. (Pete Docter's directorial debut).

Squirrel! (You have to see the movie to appreciate this.)
What I also found was quite a great story. My fear that this would be a light concept was shattered as I was carried along on a grand adventure and thrust into an exciting battle against age-old intrepid explorer Charles Muntz, voiced with passion by Christopher Plummer.

So enough about the story. What about the animation? The look of Up is different from any other CG movie I've seen. I saw this in standard 2-D projection, and it still looked like I could reach around the characters and grab them. I can't wait to see this in stereoscopic 3-D.

At first glance, Simon was skeptical about Up's potential.

Squirrel!
The character textures look like a soft velour puppet, but animated with perfection. Yet it always looks like a cartoon. Fun colors, cartoony action and slapstick humor make it a refreshing romp.

I was also amazed to see Carl's beard growth throughout the film. You can actually see his day-to-day facial hair growth. I've never seen that in an animation before and it added a wonderful realism without becoming too realistic.