This 2009 Pixar Studios (with Walt Disney Pictures) is probably one of the best gerontological movies ever and the first serious animated film in which the hero is an older person. The beauty and success of UP! is rooted in three key novel elements of this gerontological ground-breaking animated file:
1. After many years that "children" oriented animated films stigmatically and stereotypically portrayed older persons (especially older women) as witches or ugly or simply irrelevant - this is the first animated movie where not only the older person is a "normal" human being - he is actually the hero and the main character of the film.
2. We meet the hero - Mr. Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) not when he is old - but we first meet his as a small kid. Hence, we see his aging process and "meet" him again as an older persons - after we've already viewed his life course. This "life course" perspective used to be very rare with regards to films with older persons - as we would meet the aging heroes as way were already "old", with little knowledge of their past.
3. Finally, the portrayal of Carl, the aging hero, is constructed in such an unageist manner: in its full human complexity, without hiding the decline of abilities of old age, but at the same time allowing for all the positive and powerful elements of old age to appear: wisdom, experience, humanity.
This is not a "children's" movie - this is one of the best gerontological movies you'll ever see.
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