Lemon Inc.

I finally saw Pixar’s Up last Sunday and in short I really liked it. The purpose of this blog post isn’t to sum up the story or to present an objective review but to simply share my opinion of the film. In case you don’t know much about it here’s a basic summary:

Up is about Carl Fredricksen, an old man, looking back on his life and lamenting all the things that he didn’t do. He and his wife had dreams of going on grand adventures in South America but never managed to achieve these dreams. After the death of his wife he decides to attach a bunch of balloons to his house and float his way there.

When I first saw the trailer I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical about the film. I really liked the fact that they put an old man in the lead role though. A lot of people thought that it was a bad decision because people would have a hard time relating to an elderly character. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Old people make great characters! Who has more baggage or regrets than an old character?

What made me skeptical though was that I got the sense that Pixar wanted to tell a very character based film that was essentially a slice of life story and that the whole idea of the floating house was just a hook to appeal to the masses. Of course this was only my first impression and since Pixar hasn’t ever made a bad* film I was optimistic about it. The paragraph below is a rant about animated movies that you might want to skip past.

Rant starts here…

This is just my personal opinion but I feel that if a film is animated then people immediately assume that it has to have some kind of fanciful quality; that it has to do something that a live-action film couldn’t do. But this isn’t what animated films should be for. This isn’t what they’re about (or at least it isn’t to me). I feel that the purpose of an animated film should be to present an artistic vision; to present a metaphorical representation of the themes and tone of a story. This doesn’t mean that the story must include any fantasy elements. An animated movie could be about anything in any genre. It could be a crime noir film or a romantic comedy. But nobody seems to make animated films in these genres because they think it would be better in live action. However there are many slice of life comics that apply a unique style and aesthetic to entirely realistic stories. I think it would be interesting to see more animated films that took the same approach as slice of life comics. Anyway that’s the end of that rant.

Moving on…

When I actually saw the film I realized that the fantasy elements were an integral part of the film and that they were used to contrast Carl’s regular life with the dream-life that he was trying achieve. While I enjoyed the more fanciful elements of Up, such as the exotic bird or the talking dogs, I actually found them less interesting than the more mundane reality based ideas. I think that this is because at it’s core the message of Up is that reality can be as amazing as fantasy. I actually got really choked up at several parts of the film which hasn’t happened with any other Pixar film as far as I can remember.

The animation was also better than any animated film that I’ve seen before. The hair and environments looked really realistic while maintaining a stylized look and while it’s a bit of a gimmick the 3D really works and is pretty cool. Up may not have had as many moments of pure fun as previous Pixar movies but I felt that it had a deeper meaning to it. I think It’s now tied with Monsters Inc. as my favourite Pixar film.

I give Up five lemons out of five!

-Tim

*My least favorite Pixar films would be Cars and Wall-E. Cars was good but I just didn’t find the concept as compelling or interesting as Pixar’s other films. I really liked the concept of Wall-E but I think it would have worked better as a short as it seemed to drag a bit in the middle when they introduced the evil robot/ship’s wheel.