UP REVIEW

Are Pixar movies still for kids?

This is what I found myself asking after watching Pixar's latest and tenth film, Up.

Up starts out telling the story of Carl Fredrickson. As a young boy he dreams of being an explorer. He shares this passion with Ellie, whom later becomes the love of his life. They get married and vow to one day build a house on the cliff of a rainfall in South America. After she dies, and Carl becomes a grumpy old man who's getting kicked out of the home he and Ellie built, he ties a bazillion balloons to the house and sets off for the waterfall. 

Now this is only the first 30 minutes. After that, Carl finds Russel, an eager wilderness explorer, on his porch. On route to the falls, they encounter a talking dog (by way of technology) and a large pre-historic bird. To say anything else would be giving away too much.

Yeah, it may seem like a lot, and it is, but Pixar does a great job keeping everything manageable. In fact, everything else is really secondary to the main plot - Carl fulfilling this promise to his dead wife. And we are constiently reminded of it as we see Carl physically pulling his house through the South American jungle. The film, as all Pixar films do, does a great job of focusing on the moments than anything else. The most beautiful, of course, being Carl caring for his house which reminds him of Ellie. 

At the beginning is a lovely montage of Carl growing old with Ellie up until her death. That short sequence alone could melt hearts, much like WALL-E's first 30 minutes of no dialogue - visual storytelling at it's best. It shows them growing up spending time together, getting married, planning to have kids, failing, saving money to go to South America, having to spend the money on other emergencies, growing old, and eventually Ellie's death. This is all set to a musical number "Married Life", which will no doubt make composer Michael Giacchino in consideration for Best Score when next year's Oscar's roll around. Just listen:

My favorite character of the film, since Ellie wasn't given much screentime, was the dog, DOUG. His master has given him a collar that vocalizes his thoughts. While the other talking dogs are malicious, cut-throat, and demeaning, DOUG is a lovable buffoon. 

It may seem like I'm gushing because I am. UP is great and despite it's "ghetto animation status" UP is better than 90% of the films out there. It's action appeals to kids and themes appeals to adult. I don't see anyone walking away from this film unhappy. 

But there were somethings I didn't like:

1) The Dogs:

This movie is so grounded. Despite the quirky characters, it doesn't launch into blatant buffoonery like most cartoons do. Even the talking dogs are handly quite nicely. They don't talk, they have collars created by their master that vocalizes their thoughts. Through this, I can buy dogs communicating and having their own chain of command. But what I can't buy is dogs flying planes. Toward the end's big action sequence, three dogs board jets in an effort to shoot down Russel. So these dogs can talk, but where in the hell did they learn to fly jets. And wouldn't these dogs that can fly jets be more impressive than this stupid bird, the bad guy Charles F. Muntz is after in order to regain his glory. It was a minor irritance, mainly because I didn't find it consistent. 

2) Jumble Mumble

I apologize that I now have to compare every Pixar film to WALL-E, but in terms of the story WALL-E was way more succinct. It was all about WALL-E chasing love and Eve's "directive" of getting the ship to return to earth by proving this plant existed. Up is less focused, instead comprising of a bunch of jumbled storylines. Carl is fullfulling his dead's wife wish by putting thier house on the cliff. Russell needs to get his last Wilderness Scout badge in order to get promoted, thus bringing his estranged father to his graduation. Charles F. Muntz wants to prove that this bird exists in order to reclaim his glory days as an explorer. And the bird, just wants to feed her children. It's great that everyone had their backstory and motivations but none of them really went together. 

3) Title= Up?

Going into Up, no one really knew what it was about other than a guy getting over his dead wife by attaching a bazillions balloons to his house. Up was great for the marketing plan, because the pictures with the house flying certainly got people's attention. But other than that, Up had little to do with the story. It wasn't about Carl moving up, but Carl moving on. Could "Up" be the worst Pixar title so far?

CULTURAL INTROSPECTION:

I don't think people understand how rare it is to see these movies we're seeing from Pixar. The last three films, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up are films that could have never been made by Hollywood's standard. Hollywood is a business, not an art, and movies about rats, lonely robots, and old people would never be thought of as appealing to kids. They even had to fight the Disney machine to be allowed to create Wall-E (a lonely robot in a post-apocalyptic like earth with no dialogue in the first half-hour, this is unheard of in the realms of kid's movies). This is good that Pixar is being allowed to tell the stories they want to tell and that people are responding favorably to them. In this day and age where Slumdog Millionaire won Best Film and Barak Obama is President, maybe Hollywood too will loosen its grip on their pre-conceived notions of bankable film concepts.

Also, the idea for Up came about when creator Pete Doctor, was thinking about a way to escape from life. While the film turned into something else, this idea of getting away from everything is generally one people connect with. I remember Into the Wild from few years back which explored the same theme.  

THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE: 

This film isn't really about black and white. There are no black characters, but then again, very few humans in general are actually shown. 

Up is more about moving on in life. Carl will never forget his memories with Ellie, but what he needs desperately is to create new memories without her. Often, when the history of racism and slavery in the US are discussed, the white-counterpoint is these are events of the past that need to be forgotten in order to create a new optimistic future. 

In my own opinion, it depends on the issue. Slavery - yes. Reparations - yes. The N-word - jury still out. Civil Rights & Social Inequality - no, not until full-equality has been achieved. 

But in a lot of ways, we have let things in the past stay in the past. Race relations are a lot smoother than they were back in the day. It's just that every other year issue/injustice/debate that brings this issues back to the surface i.e. Jena 6, Katrina, Rodney King, O.J.

RATING:

 = 4 STARS

 = 0 BLACK FISTS