saw Up again a few nights ago. What a great movie – and somewhat different than the usual Pixar fare.

On the one hand, the animation keeps on getting better and better – the balloons above the house look almost real, and it’s interesting that they’d make a movie about an old man and his early child dreams of South American adventure (?). And the usual Pixar ‘warm & silly’ touches are there too (talking dogs with several recurring jokes, gentle slapstick humor throughout, a weird chocolate-loving bird named Kevin, etc.).

I also appreciate Pixar’s continued willingness to subtly slam the corporations (not that Hollywood doesn’t make a lot of income doing that anyway) but Pixar is more sublime than most, barring say, WALL-E (that movie is a more extreme position on the subject :)). Here the anti-corporate commentary largely takes the form of Carl’s house being ‘built around’ by skyscrapers (reminds me of the old lady’s San Francisco firehouse in Herbie Rides Again) but there’s also implications for both the two heroes (Carl and explorer scout Russell) and villain (Muntz) concerning the underlying theme of adventure and seeking the unknown. The ‘real world’ is never kind to that one, to be sure.

There are definitely varied movie and pop-culture influences at work here – at least in my mind. Muntz’ airship is right out of The Island at the Top of the World; kerewin noted the house + balloons as possibly inspired by James & the Giant Peach; and my own (i’m sure unintended) reference is the Alpha dog’s distorted voice (heard at two different times in the movie) being identical to Conan O’Brien’s Pimpbot 5000 – too funny. And the whole ‘travel adventure’ artwork seen early on by Carl and Ellie as kids is very reminiscent of the earlier Pixar movie The Incredibles (I’m thinking of Mr. Incredible in his office looking at all his old glory newspaper articles, and of the artwork in the closing credits, too – classic stuff!)

But what makes Up more than a bit different than other Pixar movies (and other family fare) is their willingness to inject a lot of sadness into the movie and plot. The early montage of Carl & Ellie’s life together by itself is enough to get out the hanky, but it doesn’t stop there. Although they balance it somewhat by the various triumph(s) in the movie, this is still a much sadder story than most – one of our friends is adamant he’d never bring kids to this movie, way too depressing! 🙂 But to his point, I think at least some of that sadness is aimed far more directly at adults and you have to be one to really appreciate WHY it is sad and not simply transition periods between the more action-oriented portions of the movie. Maybe it’s not sad per se, but rather, poignant and wistful? The writers obviously make strong points about ‘live life to the fullest’, ‘don’t forget to look around you for the adventure you already live’, and themes to that effect. Sage advice indeed – but rare in an animated family movie?

I guess that’s what continues to make Pixar special and their movies stand out from the crowd. While I think the next couple movies are going to be sequels (Cars 2, Monsters Inc. 2) hopefully they’ll continue with the original, unique stuff.

candybowl

watched the original TRON last night. Given how recently we saw the sequel, it was good to go back to the original for comparisons.

1) I missed the nuance of ‘clu’ in the original until this time. You may remember early on when Flynn is trying to hack the MCP (before he goes ‘into’ the computer himself) he has a tank running around with a program that looks like him – that’s Clu – seen far more prominently in the sequel of course. Sadly the ‘loose bit‘ seen here (and a bit later) didn’t make the sequel….

2) LIked the far more prevalent Recognizers here. In the sequel, they basically get one scene early on, and that’s kinda it. Here they are much more a part of the plot, including when Flynn steals one and flies it (not entirely successfully) to the I/O tower to meet Tron and Yori. The Recognizers for me are one of the definitive icons from TRON, and I wish they had done far more with them in the sequel , doh!

3) They make far more effort to tie together the computer world, the human world, and the relationship between the two here. Which of course ends up as background in the sequel, but if they hadn’t done it the sequel would be extremely confusing (rather than just sort of).

4) The plot holds together decently – there are some slow spots, yes – but on balance, it sets up the villain(s) well and then provides several good guys to battle them in various ways (although not really explaining what the MCP ultimately wanted to ‘do’ once it infiltrated all the computers in the human world – wait for the rise of/fight Skynet? :))

5) I am still amazed at the lameness of the critics slamming this movie in their reviews of the sequel. It is patently obvious most of them never watched it, or were too young for the original (and then never watched it priot to the new one), and/or simply don’t get it, period. Yes, many ideas from this movie have been done later and arguably better in other ways, but TRON showed the way and visually has a style all its own (doesn’t hurt having Syd Mead and other renowned artists/conceptual designers setting a pretty high bar, either).

This movie is not Citizen Kane – and perhaps by today’s standards it looks kind of dated – kerewin commented more than once on the ‘lame special effects’ – which I have to counter with ‘dated’ – they aren’t lame! And maybe you had to grow up at that time during the earlier ‘rise of the computer’ in our daily lives vs. now. But seen vs. much of what has come later – and especially how lame at least half of the vaunted Star Wars movies have been and the third Matrix movie, etc. – there’s certainly plenty of room out there for an alternate vision. Viva TRON!

candybowl