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topazSaw UP on Sunday. It's very very good. It didn't hit my buttons the way Toy Story and Finding Nemo did, but it's very good -- and it is without question the most audacious, brazen thing that Pixar has done yet.
The truth is that when the previews for UP came out I wasn't impressed. I thought it looked terrible. I thought they had lost their minds. A story about a cantankerous old man who uses helium balloons to turn his house into a floating airship? With a stowaway annoying Boy Scout? And together they go have adventures in the South American jungle? It looked like an incoherent mess -- like something we might have seen from Disney or Ralph Bakshi at their lowest, most desperate hours.
In order to make an idea this preposterous work, the only solution is to grab on to the story with both hands, and hold it high and proud, no apologies. And that's what they did. What we got is an animated fable about loss and rebirth, about dreams and living, about hope and disillusionment. We got an animated film cheeky enough to quote movies from Fitzcarraldo to Wings to maybe even a little of Island of Lost Souls (to say nothing of C.M. Coolidge). In the end I was kind of amazed that they pulled it together, but pull it together they did.
Do bring tissues. You will need them sooner than you think.
The truth is that when the previews for UP came out I wasn't impressed. I thought it looked terrible. I thought they had lost their minds. A story about a cantankerous old man who uses helium balloons to turn his house into a floating airship? With a stowaway annoying Boy Scout? And together they go have adventures in the South American jungle? It looked like an incoherent mess -- like something we might have seen from Disney or Ralph Bakshi at their lowest, most desperate hours.
In order to make an idea this preposterous work, the only solution is to grab on to the story with both hands, and hold it high and proud, no apologies. And that's what they did. What we got is an animated fable about loss and rebirth, about dreams and living, about hope and disillusionment. We got an animated film cheeky enough to quote movies from Fitzcarraldo to Wings to maybe even a little of Island of Lost Souls (to say nothing of C.M. Coolidge). In the end I was kind of amazed that they pulled it together, but pull it together they did.
Do bring tissues. You will need them sooner than you think.
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Date: 2009-07-07 08:24 pm (UTC)And yeah, I cried a bunch too. A couple of the buttons were close to home, but more than any Pixar film I can remember, this one manages to straddle a perfect line between childhood and adult drama.