Movin’ Pictures: Up

Here’s my beef with Disney, and by extension Pixar.

They are both very, very, very good…at creating ambiance. That is the secret to their brilliance and success. They can create entire worlds that are nothing more than pallets of mood and memory designed to invoke deep seeded emotions within you. If you want to know what I mean, go to Disney Land. Every ride is designed with that in mind. On the Pirates of the Caribbean, you really are on a pirate ship circa 1790 and with it comes all the adventure. On the Briar Rabbit Splash Mountain ride, you step into the antebellum south and the beauty of nature. Their movies reflect broader tones, such as love, adventure, bravery and innocence.

On the other hand, Disney and Pixar can kiss my ass because they are a multi-billion, multi-national conglomerate rivaling oil companies who really couldn’t give a flying fuck if one of the fat, mouth-breathing troglodytes they deviously pander to gets run over by a bus in the parking lot of a theatre or Disney theme park. But what really gets me is after I see one of their movies (Up is good, by the way), after they spend an hour and a half pumping me full of thoughts of beauty and awe directed towards the world we live in, I have to go outside and face the fucking reality that I’m a bitter, mean spirited asshole living in a world where at least 4 billion people live below Mexico’s poverty line.

The more I like the movie, the more I look in the mirror and think “…shit..….”

Well, I’m feeling like quite the dickhead right about now.

Up has been garnering rave reviews, and I suppose that’s justified. It’s quirky and terribly sweet, with some humorous bits thrown in there. You can tell Pixar doesn't even have to try anymore. They’ve hit their stride. They know just the right mixtures, the right combinations of voice talent, story telling and visuals (it’d be retarded for me to even try to describe how, *sigh* again, Pixar made a visually terrific film) and can just crank this shit out.

The best part of the movie for me is the first 5 minutes. That’s the flashback to when the old man protagonist Mr. Fredricksen was a kid he met his polar opposite wife over their love of adventure. Then it shows them getting married, having a life, growing old together up until his wife dies. It’s a very classic and heart warming relationship that’s strange to watch in cartoon 3-D form. The only way I can cope with not having something that beautiful and pure in my life is to remind myself that the divorce rate in this country is 51% and that no one has had something like that. Ever. Relationships like that were cooked up in the ‘50’s as propaganda to fight against communists.

There were some problems, and maybe they are related. The first was that it was too short at just 1:36:00. Uh…yeah. [Joke]. The second is that the whole movie, especially the villain, seemed really tacked on. It went “plot, plot, plot, plot, pl-WOAH, crazy blast-from-the-past villain startin’ shit for no real rhyme or reason! Is he crazy? I don’t know! Let’s see where this takes us!” The only reason Charles Muntz (the villain) existed was to show how your heroes can be dicks, then, well, that’s pretty fucking confusing. Then the ending made no sense with Mr. Fredricksen acting as a surrogate father to that fat little Asian Boy Scout kid Russell.

Also, you know the story about the founding Pixar gurus sitting together at a lunch and they busted out the ideas for stuff that became Toy Story, Bugs Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo and Wall-E, right? Those were all premeditated and fit some sort of idea they were aiming for. Up just seems like it was made because they had deadlines on their mortgages (note: all these guys are richer than God so they don’t actually have mortgages).

I give Up 7/10 corgis. Meh, I liked it.