I was thinking about Mike's comment about how The Incredibles argues that real heroism occurs in the domestic sphere. This triggered a similar reading regarding Up. I'm just going to go ahead with the spoilers, so feel free to stop reading now if you haven't seen it.
The movie ends with a series of snapshots of the old man and the Wilderness scout. The snapshots appear in the scrapbook that the old man's deceased wife had been keeping since childhood. It was meant to be her Book of Adventure. As far as we know, the last page she entered was the picture of their house being impossibly relocated to the top of Paradise Falls. Mr. Frederickson lived his life thinking that was the adventure she always wanted, but, in one of the most catharsis inducing scenes in the movie, we find out that she had (on the sly) been using the book as a photo album throughout their married life. Marriage was the adventure.
By inserting the pictures of the Wilderness scout after the pictures of his wife, the film suggests that children are the subsequent adventure.
But I think the film is suggesting more than this Hallmark card style worldview.
Mr. Frederickson leaves in his balloon house because a court order has required him to enter a retirement home (after he bludgeons a high-rise construction worker who accidentally knocks over his mailbox). He doesn't want to go to he retirement home, but he has no children, friends, or relatives to shelter him. It's a pretty big problem in our society today--the way our elderly are becoming increasingly marginalized by our nuclear families and private lifestyles.
But there is another problem in our society--divorce and the threat of abandonment. We find out that the Wilderness scout's father has divorced his mother and remarried. The stepmother (in true fairy tale fashion) is not interested in the kid and has been discouraging the father from spending time with him. At the end of the film, when the Wilderness scout is getting his final merit badge, his father is nowhere to be seen. Mr. Frederickson mounts the stage and becomes the surrogate father. Next comes the series of snapshots of the two engaged in various paternal (or grandpaternal) activities.
This, I think, is the most provocative fantasy of the film--even more compelling and moving than a fling house. The writers detect two social problems--abandonment of the elderly and abandonment of children--and fantasize a solution that essentially kills two birds with one stone. Both ends of the spectrum of life are feeling ostracized and being pushed out of focus. Why shouldn't they reach out to one another?
Or maybe it's not so much of a fantasy. More and more families are coming to rely on grandparents to raise children, after all...so much so that there is even a government Website to offer assistance.
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