Up, Up, and Away!

Isabel and I just watched our first Netflix rental last night: Pixar's Up.
This was easily the best movie we've seen in a long time--and it was definitely the best movie of the summer.
But watching most of Up was something of a downer--at least for Isabel, who pretty much cried her way through about two-thirds of the movie.

I'll admit I got pretty weepy, too.

It's impressive how much Pixar pretty much blows away every other computer animation company on the scene at the moment -- and even blows away its own parent company Disney. For instance, we watched Dreamworks big-budget B-movie parody Monsters vs. Aliens last week and were bored out of our minds. Isabel decisively fell asleep about half-way through it. MvA's story was weak, loose, and contrived. We felt nothing for any of the characters, and the film reduced itself to slapstick crudity. Up, like its predecessor Wal-E, compelled emotional attachments to characters that didn't even speak.

I don't want to say too much about the movie's story as I wouldn't want to sap any of the catharsis for those who haven't seen it yet. Nevertheless, you can't expect me to blog on a work of art without some kind of critique...

The movie has at least one significant flaw (and this is something of a spoiler): it's the first Pixar movie I can think of with a bona fide villain. It's also the first Pixar movie I can think of where a villain has a classic villain's demise. This was a little disappointing to me. It felt a little cheap, especially since I've been impressed so far with how well Pixar has managed to keep caricatures of evil out of their movies. They had been following the formulae of Hiyao Miyazaki, the Japanese animator behind Studio Chibli's Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. In his films, villains are either completely absent or they have conversion experiences. People can do horrible things in his stories, but he almost always extends an olive branch and lets them become reconciled to their victims. This wasn't the case in Up where a murderous villain appears to meet a murderous end. I was rather hoping that the bad guy hunting the rare bird would have realized the error of his ways and become a conservationist or something. The villain, however, was really only a part of a subplot--and his demise functions primarily as a foil for what the protagonist was at risk of becoming. (That being said, the villain also marks the movie's largest plot hole...if the adventurer was an adult when the protagonist was a boy, how old is he when the protagonist goes on his trip to South America?)

The only other possible critique I can give the movie (other than obnoxiously the pointing out the cartoon physics necessary to lift a house with helium balloons) is that it essentially boils down to The Wizard of Oz for old people. The protagonist is lifted away through the clouds to a strange and unusual land. He has to follow a path to a geographical destination. He has three goofy sidekicks each with a quest to achieve something (wilderness scout / a merit badge, Doug / a new master, Kevin /motherhood). At the end of his journey, he discovers that the seemingly larger than life figure whose footsteps he has been following is nothing like the heroic if not magical figure he has followed. And does it matter that the "wizard" figure even flies around in a balloon? The only thing missing are the ruby slippers (I half expected the house to land on the adventurer at the end).

Comments

[kateri]

Peter, It's obvious by your post that you don't have children. Try watching it with one and you will have a whole different perspective of the movie. How does one explain the beginning? How does one explain disturbing ending? This should not have been marketed for kids.

[Mike]

1. I don't have kids either, but I don't necessarily think that because a movie has disturbing parts it necessarily shouldn't be for children.

2. Out of curiosity, Peter, why don't you consider the nemesis in The Incredibles a bona fide villain? Is it because he's sort of created by the hero? Or something else?

[Peter Terp]

I'd be a far happier man if Hollywood started producing more animated features that weren't marketed at children. I think it's a sad state of affairs that Americans generally regard the art form as only appropriate for juvenalia. It's one of the reasons why most of the best animated films end up being imported from France or Japan. Those countries understand that animation doesn't necessarily equate to "children's movie."
That being said, I'm not really sure how Up is any more disturbing for kids than, say Finding Nemo or Bambi...or, say, real life.

One of the things that I most respect about Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro is his unflinching, unromanticized depiction of how serious medical illness invades childhood. There is something problematic about always feeding kids sanitized, cartoon versions of reality...as if the human psyche can't process tragedy until it reaches the age of 13.

Of course, Up skirts around some of the serious issues it confronts by confronting them silently. The movie never says what happens in opening sequence. The audience has to assert its own views.
That's also part of what makes the film so brilliant and so tragic. We end up imagining what would most horrify us individually--which always produces a more universal affect than a writer being too explicit.

[Peter Terp]

Mike--
I'll have to concede the villain in The Incredibles.
To be honest, I keep forgetting that was a Pixar movie.
I think it was my least favorite of their films (probably because I felt that it was the most derivative).
So you got me on that one...although you are still sort of reinforcing my point. That the part of the Up that I least appreciated was perhaps what it had most in common with my least favorite Pixar movie.

[Mike]

Yes, I suppose that does reinforce your point. You're welcome.
I have to disagree with you about The Incredibles, though; I really liked it. Something about its portrayal of family life as a sort of heroism (although the hero couldn't see it at first), and the idea that leveling the playing field by downplaying actual gifts (the boy's speed, for example) does more harm than good really worked for me. Probably because I'm a hero and gifted.

[Peter Terp]

Not a big fan of escapism are you, Mike?

I agree with you on the argument that The Incredibles works to dismiss a cultural myth that children are too fragile to handle rejection or failure. The "if everybody is special then nobody is special" line was one of the nuggets I mined from the movie.
As a satire on the state of family and education, The Incredibles has a good message.

I think I got too distracted by the super hero window dressing, and became annoyed that it just kind of recycled pretty standard super hero tropes and parodies.

Really, The Incredibles felt more like a Saturday-morning cartoon version of The Watchmen (of which there is a very funny Saturday-morning cartoon style parody on Youtube) or even X-Men. That being said, The Incredibles was more entertaining than the actual Watchmen movie (snooze-fest!).

Another way to look at it might be this. If you lined up the one-sentence plots to all of the Pixar movies, The Incredibles would probably be the one that sounds the least original--although Cars might give it a run for its money.

[Akh Ari]

I like your "Wizard of Oz for old people" interpretation, but I'm surprised you didn't interpret it as "Star Wars for suburbanites."

[Peter Terp]

Star Wars for Suburbanites -- wasn't that the relaunch of Battlestar Galactica?

[Sebastian]

Peter I am a little disappointed in your knowledge of Pixar movies ;). The grasshopper villain from "A Bug's Life" also met a similar fate to those in "The Incredibles" and "Up", and I feel eaten alive by a giant bird to be probably the most horrific death.

As much as thoroughly enjoyed the Incredibles, I do agree with you about the movies handling of the super hero aspect. However, much like the Adam West Batman, I find those recycled super hero parodies and clichés most entertaining. Although I am sure it helped that I had never heard of the Watchmen or any other "super-dystopia" style films when I first saw The Incredibles.

[Peter Terp]

Whoa..."A Bug's Life" was Pixar? Man...I am totally out of the loop.
Has everything I've written on this blog been a misinformed lie?!?!