Up, on the other hand, is about a man who fell in love with his childhood friend Ellie, married her, and grew old at her side. Early in the movie, Ellie passes away, but the aging Carl is still deeply attached to Ellie's memory. As children, their friendship had been based on a common love of adventure, and Carl regrets never having fulfilled her dream of someday traveling to the beautiful Paradise Falls in South America, where she hoped to build a house. The movie follows him and his growing rag-tag gang (a boy, a talking dog, and a bird), as they set off to rectify this situation.

Getting Along and Keeping the Girl

Instead of dwelling on the classic theme of Getting the Girl - Up is about is about getting along with her, till death do us part, and beyond. It's important not to avoid getting too jaded about this particular topic. Psychological research has demonstrated time and again that it's good for our mental and physical health to keep our long-term relationships alive.

Up is also about Getting Along with others. And again it's an interesting twist - about a relationship between a socially avoidant man closing in on eighty and a somewhat intrusive eight-year-old Boy Scout. The would-be helpful little Boy Scout's parents have recently divorced, and his father has been absent of late. These two themes set up one the two most touching elements of the plot.

The Psychology of Love and Happiness: And Some Gift Recommendations

Are we really saying you'll get more out of a Disney cartoon - with a schmaltzy Hollywood ending and the grumpy aging voice of Ed Asner - than out of an avant-garde movie that takes an edgy look at modern life and stars George Clooney at his cleverest coolest best? Yes.

Up is not a perfect movie. It's a bit unbelievable, and not just in the ways intended (such as a flying balloon and talking dogs). The bad guy, who starts out as a reasonable individual, seems to turn to violence for almost no reason, even going so far as to throw a small child - one who's already securely tied to a chair and poses no threat - out of a plane.

And anyone who's seen other Disney movies will predict that the crotchety old man will eventually warm up to the awkwardly lovable kid. However, the old man's difficult choice between hanging onto the idea of a girl who's gone, and getting along with the new people in his life provides for a very compelling story. At the end, there are two especially touching scenes that resolve the old man's regrets about the unlived adventures with his love, and the young boy's desire to have his father back. It will send you away with tears in your eyes.

As we noted in our review of Up in the Air, there is a reason people like Hollywood endings. There's nothing wrong with feeling good, and there's a special art to creating a movie that will appeal to your children and you alike, for slightly different reasons. But besides the pleasurable aspects of Up, we're recommending you watch it on Valentine's Day because it celebrates not the joys of early romance and courtship, but the deeper joys of sticking with another person through all those everyday adventures and trials. While Up in the Air presents a reasonable argument that it might be worth shedding the baggage of relationships, Up presents the counterargument.

If you read Sonja Lyubormirsky's delightful book summarizing the lessons of positive psychology, you'll see that many of those lessons involve the importance of social support -- of relishing our relationships with friends and lovers, of taking the time to appreciate those relationships, and thanking them for all they do for us. If you haven't read The How of Happiness, incidentally, you should. It's full of useful advice, and it's based not on the usual off-the-cuff intuitions that fill much of the pop psych literature, but on rigorous research. Come to think of it, it'd make a great Valentine's gift.

Of course, there are plenty of tough times in marriages, and in friendships, but it's worth the effort to learn how to work through those times, and learn to appreciate one another. Even if you have a Ph.D. in psychology, you might not be as familiar as you should with what our colleagues have discovered about the tricks of maintaining long-term relationships. So in the list of suggested readings below, we also plug a couple of very helpful books by a team of University of Washington researchers who have studied the differences between couples who get along, and those who don't. You might not want to give those books as Valentine's gifts, but you'll make a better Valentine if you read them!

Our Ratings: Dave: B+  Doug A  (Of the academy award nominees we've reviewed so far, we still favor Avatar, but Up is surely the most heart-warming of the bunch.) 

Coauthored by Douglas T. Kenrick (click here for his blog Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life). 

Recommended Readings

Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). The how of happiness: A scientific approach to getting the life you want. New York: Penguin Press. (Sonja also has a Psychology Today blog).

Gottman, J.M. (1999). The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Notarius, C., & Markman, H. (1993). We can work it out: Making sense of marital conflict. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.