UP UP AND AWAY: A scene from Disney-Pixar's Up.

WALT Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios take moviegoers up, up and away on one of the funniest adventures of all time with their latest comedy-fantasy Up, from Academy Award-nominated director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc).

Presented in Disney Digital 3D, Up follows the uplifting tale of 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America.

But he discovers all too late that his biggest nightmare has stowed away on the trip: an overly optimistic eight-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell.

Their journey to a lost world, where they encounter some strange, exotic and surprising characters, is filled with hilarity, emotion and wildly imaginative adventure.

“I am so proud that Up is Pixar’s 10th film,” says John Lasseter, executive producer and chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios.

“I think it’s the funniest film that we’ve ever made, and also one of the most beautiful. We have a main character that is an amazing hero.

“Carl Fredricksen is 78 years old and he travels the world in a flying machine of his own design and still has dinner at 3.30 in the afternoon. He’s the most unlikely hero you can imagine in an action picture,” he says.

Lasseter says Fredricksen is a character who learns that the big adventures in life are all the small things that happen in everyday life. “Russell (meanwhile) is one of the most appealing and charming characters that we’ve ever created. Together with Carl, these two characters light up the screen.”

House call

The film is directed by Pixar veteran Pete Docter, who joined the studio in 1990 — just the third animator to be brought on board. Along with Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, Docter developed the story and characters for Toy Story, Pixar’s first full-length feature film, for which he also served as ­supervising animator.

Docter was a storyboard artist on A Bug’s Life and wrote the initial story treatment for Toy Story 2. He made his debut as a director on Monsters, Inc, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature Film.

As one of Pixar Animation Studios’ key creative ­contributors, Docter garnered another Academy Award ­nomination for his original story credit on Disney-Pixar’s Oscar-winning Wall-E.

“For me, what makes a film worth watching is when you go home and you’re still thinking about it,” says Docter. “You leave the theatre and you’re still thinking about it not only the next day, but the next year.

“In order to have a film affect you that way, it has to have real true emotion and resonate in some way with your own life. So even though the stars of the film may be monsters or bugs, you identify with those characters on the screen and you understand what they’re going through. It’s important to have that foundation of real truth and an emotional attachment to the ­characters.”

Lasseter agrees. “Along with the humour, you have to have heart,” he says. “Walt Disney always said, ‘For every laugh, there should be a tear.’ I believe in that.”

Filmmakers found a lot of heart in their latest adventure, exploring the love that Carl and his late wife shared and the friendship that develops between Carl and Russell.

In fact, Carl discovers that life’s true adventure can be found not in travel or great accomplishments but in the everyday relationships that we have with friends and family.”

Getting vocal

The voice cast for Up features legendary actor Ed Asner, a multiple Emmy Award winner, as balloon salesman-turned-adventurer Fredricksen. Nine-year-old Jordan Nagai makes his acting debut as the voice of the determined and eager-to-assist Russell.

Acclaimed Emmy Award-winning actor Christopher Plummer gives a rich and textured vocal performance as the voice of Charles Muntz, a faded hero with an obsession to restore his good name.

John Ratzenberger, Pixar’s “lucky charm”— the only actor to lend his voice to all of the Studio’s feature films, provides the voice of a construction foreman named Tom, who tries to encourage Carl to sell his home.

Up is the 10th film from Disney-Pixar, which has gone nine for nine with an unprecedented streak of hugely successful films, including Wall-E, Ratatouille, Cars, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life and Toy Story.

Pixar now has nine of the 25 top-grossing animated films of all time domestically, and all nine have been No 1 at the box office on their opening weekends of wide release.

Wall-E, Ratatouille, The Incredibles and Finding Nemo all earned Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature, an award that was ­introduced in 2001.

Docter says he’s learned a lot over the course of Pixar’s 10 films. “It never gets easier,” he says. “There are always new ways that the story conspires to trick us, to fool us into thinking we have the right solution. It’s only with a lot of reworking — and reworking and reworking — that you get good stuff.

“We still don’t know everything,” he continues. “But we allow ourselves to make mistakes. As Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, says, ‘if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not taking enough risks.’ I hope we never think of ourselves as experts — we learn something new on every film.”