Jun 28, 2009
Up
Up was the best Pixar movie I’ve seen outside of The Incredibles.
It’s very rare to see this level of story development in a so-called “children’s” animated feature and I defy any parent to explain how their five year-old understood anything in the first ten minutes, never mind how it relates to the central conflict within the protagonist.
This is another prime example of how animated films can be for everyone, not just (and even not primarily for) children without having to resort to prurient sex and violence.
Carl’s struggle is timeless and, more likely than not, prone to be something we all have to encounter at some point. However, as moving as it was, it’s certainly not something I would wish on my niece, for example.
It’s time to start chipping away at the idea that animation is for children. Not that they should be robbed of their own content, let me make that perfectly clear, but rather that we ought to be able to enjoy the pleasures of the medium ourselves, without it being “dumbed down.”
I might make an exception for the marketing department, however. Based on the trailers, I can only imagine they were struck deaf and dumb at the idea of selling a piece of art as if it were Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych. Honestly, I pity them.
-K
What a wonderful film. I don’t even bother ranking them anymore. Finding Nemo and WALL-E are still my sentimental favourites while Ratatouille is probably their smartest, most sophisticated, and most complete film… but it just seems inherently unfair to be making comparisons when there’s no denying the scene-for-scene, frame-by-frame brilliance of a film like Up. And I still think The Incredibles outstrips every live-action action film this decade when it comes to pure thrills.
I also think Pixar has a habit of keeping their plots under wraps. The marketing strategy is always a character teaser (just to show off the main characters and get you talking) followed by a trailer that tries so hard to keep the best moments in the bag that, quite unfortunately, a person who hasn’t seen the film wouldn’t have any evidence that Pixar was doing something head and shoulders above everybody else in the industry.
There’s no shortage of things that make Pixar special, but I think you’ve caught on to a big one: they have the courage (and the respect for the audience) to challenge the protagonists and sometimes, really hurt them. That goes for both Carl and Russell (not to mention the characters in that joyous short, Partly Cloudy!). In Disney’s heyday, when Walt was still alive, Disney films had guts just like Pixar films do now. Look at Bambi or Dumbo.
I agree wholeheartedly not only with Kevin’s post, but with Nick’s comments. For too long, animation has been ghettoized in America as being for very young children. That condescending view of the medium is, I understand, not shared by much of the rest of the world. In America, animation is often characterized as a genre unto itself and this is categorically wrong. It is a medium and can be used to interpret nearly any genre one would care to undertake. I applaud the guys at Pixar for consistently going to places their more cowardly and shallow contemporaries avoid.
Thanks for the comments, Nick and Paul. Everything you’ve said has been spot-on.
-K