I hate to do this, but it must be done. The newest Pixar film, Up, has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Only the Wall Street Journal and Salon.com have had the balls to actually call Up out on its glaring issues. (The New York Press also gave a negative review, but they don’t really count.)
To be fair, Up does have many of the redeeming qualities that have made past Pixar films great. Visually, it is impeccable. The soundtrack is wonderful. On nearly every technical or aesthetic element, the film lives up to the celebrated Pixar tradition. However, that should not excuse the fact that the writing and direction seem to be sub-par, both by Pixar’s and even the general cinema’s standards, and as a result the movie suffers greatly.
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Up is unoriginal
Up‘s writing suffers from a dearth of originality. Most of the plot elements and jokes are hackneyed and cliché, which is quite disappointing given Pixar’s usually high standards of original writing.
The primary plot is extremely unoriginal. An old man, who has lost the joys of his youth, is now grouchy and stubborn, unwilling to evolve as society does. A young boy from nearby is enthusiastic about life, and engages the old man for some reason. The two are nearly perfect opposites, yet in cinematically standard fashion, foils attract, and through daring and danger they form a deep friendship. Notice that I could just be describing Gran Torino to you and you would have no way of knowing. Old-man-with-a-heart-of-gold is extremely overdone fare; so old that even Family Guy was able to make fun of it and actually be funny.
In addition to the plot itself, most of the individual scenes and jokes are overused cinematic standards. One thing I hate in films is when some idiotic thing from the first half of the movie is somehow used as an even more idiotic plot resolution in the latter half. In Up, a good example of this is the use of yelling “squirrel” to distract the dogs. It was a little funny the first time used, but after using it to save the day it becomes rather pathetic. Similar devices were used in a few other places, like the “cone of shame” or Kevin’s love of chocolate.
(I should point out at this time that Dug’s joke about squirrels was one of the funniest jokes I have ever heard. It doesn’t forgive the movie, but it was hilarious.)
I also felt that the movie really went too far in its abuse of homage. Homage is fine, and I can appreciate it usually. (The poker scene with the dogs, for example, I thought was fine.) But parodying Star Wars and King Kong at the same time? At some point, things start to get a little pathetic.
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Up is unrealistic
I understand that in film, and especially in cartoons, it is important to be able to suspend one’s disbelief when it is appropriate. One particularly idiotic reviewer asked “who took all of the pictures of Carl and Ellie?” to which I would respond “who gives a shit?” Obviously there are times when realism is a less admirable goal than art, and I respect that. The balloons lifting the house bit, for example, is clearly infeasible, but that’s the sort of thing that simply has to be allowed. But suspension of disbelief does not mean one can simply throw all logic to the wind.
One obvious problem is that the film is about old men in a semi-fantastic setting. This doesn’t really work. Geri’s Game (the Pixar short about the old man playing chess against himself) worked because it was about an old man in a quiet, sedate park, where there are no unreasonable expectations. The Incredibles worked because it was about fantastic people in a semi-fantastic environment. But in Up, we are expected to believe that elderly men chase each other on top of dirigibles and have sword fights. While there are a couple of allusions to their age in these scenes (lol dentures), the fact is that the scenes don’t make the slightest sense in the first place. The characters simply do not fit the environment. (If the film was about characters who don’t fit their environment, then I suppose that could work, but Up clearly is not that so it’s a moot point.)
Animals in the film are ascribed an unreasonable amount of intelligence. While I understand that Pixar has made bajillions of dollars making films with intelligent bugs or toys or fish or whatever, the significant difference is that those movies basically used animals as a replacement for humans. The story of Finding Nemo is about a father searching for his estranged son, not about the plight of fish in the Great Barrier Reef. But in this film, animals, even rather stupid animals like Dug and Kevin, make far more intelligent decisions than either the villain or the heroes. Dogs are flying biplanes, for crying out loud. That’s something I might expect from a horseshit Dreamworks film, but not from Pixar. (Even Buzz Lightyear couldn’t fly.) And don’t even get me started on the psycholinguistic problems of a dog being able to properly create sentences.
Another point, while we’re on the subject. We’re expected to believe that Charles Muntz somehow had the technological genius to create a dog translation collar. Even if we suspend disbelief and accept that, then other things fall out of place. If Muntz is genius enough to invent such a device, why does he seem to act entirely on impulse, whereas his “genius” would imply some tendency towards rationality? The director obviously chose to skirt the issue, as Muntz’ association with inventing the collar is mentioned once and then completely ignored the rest of the film.
There are more examples, but in general I feel that the film took far too loose a grasp on realism. Other films were intentionally fantastic, but by choosing to make a film about normal humans, Pixar has overstepped its bounds with the artistic liberties it takes. If you want to make a movie about people in the real world, do it; but do it right.
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Up is unfulfilling
While Pixar films have a tradition of having rather sappy, family-oriented conclusions, they generally bring together an ending that provides solid emotional fulfillment. In Monster’s Inc., they save the day from the evil child-killing monsters and bring laughter to the world. In Finding Nemo, the father is reunited with the prodigal son, and they both learn a valuable lesson about the boundaries of their relationship. In Ratatouille, the protagonist is able to stop hiding behind the façade of another man and is able to come out and live his own life. All valuable, fulfilling conclusions. Not so with Up.
The first troubling part of the film for me was the introduction sequence. Don’t get me wrong; I think the first sequence was beautifully done. But the audience knows that the film is supposed to be the (rather cliché) plot of “crotchety old man with a secret heart of gold eventually breaks out of his shell thanks to exuberant young boy.” And when the film finally “starts,” with Carl as an old man, we already know he has a heart of gold. The rest of the film is just him flipping seemingly at random between kind and grouchy. There is also absolutely no inspiration shown for him being grouchy; the attitude is just attributed to him as an unnecessary stereotype of old people.
Then there is Russell. I found Russell to be an incredibly sad character. He clearly has no real friends, and has invested all of his time into Wilderness Explorers, which is a farce organization. (They don’t actually go into the Wilderness, which Russell clearly realizes, yet he accepts the sham as a suitable alternative for meaningful relationships with others.) His father is distant, but it is implied that he does care somewhat. So how does the film resolve these emotional issues? It simply doesn’t. We find out that Russell’s father actually doesn’t care about his son, which is incredibly sad, and Russell still has no friends aside from an old man and a dog who loves everything he sees.
The only other character that could possibly have emotional fulfillment associated with him would probably be Dug, but Dug is so fucking stupid that you can’t possibly care about him. As I mentioned earlier, Pixar movies traditionally place non-human characters in human roles, which allows us to empathize with them. But in Up, Dug is a non-human in a blatantly non-human role, so meaningful empathy is basically impossible.
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Of course, I realize that in the end my criticisms will always fall on deaf ears. Up is a Pixar film, and so it will be the object of ineffable worship by the masses, regardless of what I say. But I hope this at least causes people to at least look critically at what they enjoy in movies, and decide for themselves whether Up is actually worthy of the absurd amount of praise it is receiving.
