Pixar @25: UP "Cross your heart! Cross it!"

Sometimes promises can take us to "places lost in time".

Whether it's in Paradise Falls or in a life we should've lived years ago, we still want to promise and keep promises, no matter how absurd or impossible they might be. It must've been the timeless culture of spitting out easy words and sleeping over them. Couples break up, politics is an unwanted term of itself, kids fight--all because of broken promises.

Then a little mute Carl (Edward Asner) shows up, only to be forced by a young, adventurous Ellie (Elie Docter) to cross his heart to hitchike to Impossible Mountain. As the story unfolds, we learn the truth about making promises, with Pixar's touching animated feature film Up (2009, directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson).

"Adventure is out there!" From a lovable couple with the strong guts for some paradise hunting, Carl and Ellie dreamed together, saved money for Paradise Falls together, lost together and fantasized together about the place lost in time. Four scores after, with Ellie gone and the adventure book half-forgotten, it was time for 78-year-old Carl to keep the promise and embark on a journey to both a lost utopia and a life he'd forgotten to live all along.

While we witnessed and laughed at his adventures with the guys he met along the way and the obstacles he managed to overcome despite his old fragile age, we also learned how difficult it is to keep two promises at once, especially when time is not on our side and we'd have to choose which one we'll hold on to first. We also saw how determined he was to keep his promise to Ellie, only to tell us how valuable and meaningful promises should be.

Russell (Jordan Nagai), the chubby and earnest boy scout, also shared to us the sad political life of garnering a lot of medals an yet not being strong and experienced enough to survive the "wild life". On the othe hand, he was conditioned to believe how easy life is in the real world, only to finally taste it as more dangerous but more exciting at the same time.

Crossing your heart isn't much of a crime, especially for a kid, except it will define who we are in the future.

UP Fact Sheet

1. Director Pete Docter took the movie to a Broadway and Hollywood caricature style, referring to Al Hirschfeld's works.

2. Square and circle personalities surrounded Up's characters for easy recognition, according to Docter. Carl has a square personality, symbolizing the "blue" emotions of being alone and stuck, while Russell has a circle personality making him opitmistic and simply adventurous.