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 If the throngs of adoring fans that stormed theaters last May didn’t convince you to see Up, this review probably won’t do the trick either. Up is like pistachio ice cream—some people are going to love it, and beyond a certain point there’s no use explaining its appeal to those who don’t.
But if you do like this demented CG concoction, there is joy in Mudville today. The DVD gods have smiled with three radically different takes on the lovably off-the-wall Pixar hit, priced for all wallets.
Up is the convention-defying story of an elderly man (Ed Asner, and when’s the last time you saw him in a leading role?) who ties a raft of balloons to his house and floats away to a better place that turns out to be less better than simply bizarre. As if having a grumpy old protagonist who walks with a tennis-ball-adorned cane isn’t unlikely enough, he’s accompanied on his adventure by a hyperactive Wilderness Explorer (Jordan Nagai) in fanatical pursuit of a “helping the elderly” merit badge and an easily distracted talking dog (voiced by writer and co-director Bob Peterson) who divides his time between the harebrained pursuit of squirrels and saying things like, “I like you temporarily!”
 Heavily inspired by Japanese anime guru Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo), Up takes its cues from the more whimsical and contemplative corners of the film universe. Even the sequences set at ground level are full of wide-open spaces and slow, patient music or silence. Bright colors and impossible physics and architecture coexist with delicately human touches—a carved wooden bird on a mantelpiece, a grape-soda bottlecap pinned to a lapel like a medal. Like its hero, a man so devoutly in love with his late wife that his idea of heaven is throwing himself into the journey he so long promised her, Up is content with its strangeness and delights in its own idiosyncrasies.
Asner shines, sort of, as the grouchy, horn-rimmed Carl Fredricksen, whether he’s yelling at a man in a suit to “take a bath, hippie!” or spitting his dentures at the villain, a once-famous explorer (Christopher Plummer) who was Carl’s childhood hero and believes the old man has flown his house to the middle of nowhere to steal some faintly reflected glory. Nagai oscillates wildly between hyperactive comedian and unexpectedly touching lost boy as he tries valiantly to be as helpful as possible to Carl in order to win his final merit badge and, he thinks, the approval of his absent father. Plummer is delightfully malevolent as Charles Muntz and does out-of-his-gourd paranoid as perfectly as any actor has ever done, expertly balancing melodrama and menace and making a perfect foil for his goofball dog. But even the inspired performances can’t distract viewers from the sheer gorgeousness of the world revealed in Up, or disguise the filmmakers’ unbridled joy in exploring it. The film’s emotional gut punch, delivered late, isn’t particularly well-hidden, but it comes as a surprise anyway because everyone’s been so busy looking around with their mouths open.
 The bargain version of the Up DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment, MSRP: $29.99) is a single-disc widescreen edition with no frills whatsoever. Its extras are meager: a few trailers, a copy of the theatrical short “Partly Cloudy” that ran with the movie in theaters and the original short “Dug’s Special Mission,” which shows what the scatterbrained mutt was up to before he met Carl and company and provides plenty of screwball comedy à la Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, along with an unexpected tear-jerk at the end. Widely available for much less (as of this writing, the Amazon.com price is $14.99 and Borders was selling the disc for $15.99 with a free $5.00 gift card thrown in), it’s an excellent antidote to recession blues.
For those with more money to spend, the two-disc edition (MSRP: $39.99) is a bit stingy for the price but still a good mid-price option. It has a few special features in addition to the single-disc edition, including a digital copy of the film and an audio commentary by the film’s directors, Pete Docter and Bob Peterson. There’s also a somewhat-alternate ending feature called “The Many Endings of Muntz” and a doc, “Adventure is Out There,” about the research that went into the project (watch for where those fascinating rocks originated).
 The four-disc Blu-ray combo pack (MSRP: $45.99) adds to that featurettes on the movie’s post-retirement hero (“Geriatric Hero”), dogs (“Canine Companions”), Russell the Wilderness Explorer (appropriately titled “Russell: Wilderness Explorer”), the house’s design (“Homemakers of Pixar”), the flight effects (“Balloons and Flight”), the music used in the movie (“Composing for Characters”) and an interesting piece on Kevin (“Our Giant Flightless Friend, Kevin”), the elusive bird, and how they animated all those darn feathers. There’s also a Global Guardian Badge geography game, extra material featuring Carl and his wife (“Married Life”) that shows the original story concept behind their touching love story and a visual montage of concept art, clips and documentary coverage (“Cine-Explore”) that illustrates the directors’ commentary. The Blu-ray release also includes a DVD copy of the film, which includes all the bonus features found on the two-disc DVD edition, for viewers to enjoy when they’re not able to watch the Blu-ray discs on a Blu-ray player. It’s on the pricey side, even for Blu-ray, but for Up devotees it just might be worth it.
Regardless of which version you purchase, however, Up is sure to have every kid in the house, ages 9 to 90, yelling “Squirrel!”
Up is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
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