02.06
Wh-whaaa? The ARevelation crew actually keeping up to date with their reviews? You’re darn right we are!
For stupid legal reasons, I gotta say that this review was originally from my movietome.com review under the username petewrigley. Great, another place to stalk me…
While Pixar movies in general depict quite the environment filled with colors, hues and images you would only expect to see in a doctor’s office waiting room poster, “Up” really sets the standard. All Pixar movies preceding “Up” always dealt with the amazing or fantastic, either giving life to everyday things such as toys, bugs and cars or adding a certain twist to an already explored world, such as that of superheroes. While “Up” can be argued to fall into either category, at its core it is about nothing more than a man and a woman. Though it is completely understandable that things like the house being lifted by thousands of balloons was to distract you from such.
Without spoiling too much, “Up” takes a route definitely explored by children’s movies in the past (death) and taking it from a different perspective. We’ve seen how emotionally scarring it is to have a parent die, but what if that perspective was shifted from child to adult? Although I came into the movie knowing the exact details of its setup, main character Carl’s montage from his childhood to elderly years still brought a tear to my eye. Having such a powerful setup from the get-go of the movie definitely helps get you to relate to Carl pre-grumpy-old-man as well as helps viewers eliminate skepticism once we finally see the house lift off for the first time.
As we begin to wander into the realm of adventure, we are introduced to scout Russell and dog Dug. While Russell and Carl form for quite the duo, Dug just seems to be there for comic relief more than anything else. As the movie progresses, Russell and Carl’s personal storylines begin to intertwine, while Dug continues to just be there with a separate storyline with a loose connection to the other two only near the movie’s conclusion. Most of the dog-centric scenes seemed aimed especially at the younger viewers, but they helped move the plot along as well as gave more insight into the lurking villain, so I guess they’re not all that bad.
Just the idea of a house floating in the sky via balloons is so Pixar. By this film, you would expect them to begin running out of outlandish visuals to roll with, but thankfully that has yet to be the case. As expected, Pixar has again succeeded in taking such a ridiculous concept and creating a beautifully written story from it.
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Well with all that said, here’s a couple additional stuff I thought of uh… post-review-writing (would “addendum” fit?):
Being the obsessive fanboy I am, I just had to look up a few “Up” related things and give ’em an appropriate plug:
As always, the music is also such a major part of the series. Though upon finding that the composer for the movie was Michael Giacchino (of LOST fame as well as the latest Star Trek movie) I shouldn’t be that surprised. The movie does the sort of thing where there’s an overall “theme song” for the movie that changes in tone whenever the mood changes. In that sense, it reminds me of Pixar’s short films that they’d always play before their feature movie.
Looking the soundtrack up, it seems like Disney’s made the decision to go all digital with their music purchases. And while it’s somewhat of a downer that we can’t get any sort of tangible something, at least the songs are available. Go sample the soundtrack on amazon.
Another thing that really enthralled me was the art style. Sure, some may argue that Pixar’s design process in terms of things like character designs and scenery has been a bit more “cookie cutter” as of late, I really think that at least it’s not the case with this movie. Like I said before, I was constantly reminded of those cool posters at doctor’s waiting rooms as I was watching the movie. Pixar just seems to go above and beyond when it comes to visuals that I think checking out the movie’s accompanying art book is worth the $26 plus shipping on amazon.
So there you have it. This is usually when I come up with some kind of fancy ending sentence, but I’ve got class in 20 minutes and I’ve yet to have me some breakfast, so laters!
Originally posted on Monday, June 1, 2009.