For Carl Fredrickson, a shy boy with a thirst for adventure, the life he seeks is one of greatness. When we meet him in the opening scenes of Pixar's newest animated film Up, he watches captivated as the latest adventures of world traveler Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer) unfold before him on the big screen. On his way home, a voice narrates his every step, proclaiming: "There's nothing he cannot do." And when he meets (and later marries) the even more adventurous Ellie, there is the sense that between the two of them, that might very well be true.

As the film races through decades in what is one of the most touching love and life montages I have ever seen, we watch Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) and Ellie grow from young children to senior citizens. Together they sell balloons, go for picnics in the park, and face hardships such as broken bones, leaky roofs, and their inability to have children. Even though life seems to continually deter their plans for world-traipsing adventure, above their fireplace remains a picture of the mystical Paradise Falls where Carl long ago promised to take Ellie. And when Ellie passes away just shy of a surprise trip to Venezuela and Carl is threatened with life in a retirement home, he takes it upon himself to make Ellie's dream of living by Paradise Falls come true even if she is now only with him in spirit.

And so begins a tale about a curmudgeonly old man who flies across the world in a house held up by helium balloons; Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai), the 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer who stops by to help Carl cross the street and ends up helping him cross the world; and the lessons they learn about what it really means to live a life of greatness and adventure. Warm-hearted despite his initial grouchiness and lovable despite his unexhausted hyperactivity, both Carl and Russell, respectively, quickly work their way into not only each other's hearts but ours. Joined by an oversized bird named Kevin and a talking dog named Dug (voiced by Bob Peterson), Carl's crusty exterior continues to chip away as he both accepts the help of his new friends and comes to their aid. And when Carl's journey to Paradise Falls turns into an unexpected battle, Carl and all his new friends prove that often the most valuable adventures are not the ones that end up in the headlines, but rather the ones that continue on despite them.

As we see in Up, sometimes the problem with seeking lives of greatness is that great seems like something we simply cannot attain. Great lives are those by lived by movie stars, professional athletes, and world leaders. Our lives? Merely ordinary existences that fail to amount to anything memorable. But as Carl recognizes when he realizes that his life with Ellie was still an amazing adventure even though they never made it to Paradise Falls, our lives need not emulate the most famous figures of the century to be great. And as Russell puts it when he tells Carl about simple moments spent eating ice cream and counting cars with his now barely-present father, "That stuff might sound boring, but I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most."

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