I understand. I do. You feel threatened because I still have yet to be brainwashed by Pixar's magical spell of melarcky. (uh huh, I went there)
I saw this flick at the drive-in, my infant son was in the car, it was his first official movie. And, hey, I'm as human as the next guy. The opening montage pulls at my heart and makes me a little misty too. But, whereas, you all drop to your knees and begin declare Pixar's brilliance and et cetera, I stand up to the manipulation of my emotions and say "No! I will not be swayed!"
I resent Pixar. I resent their heartfelt montages (Toy Story 2's girl cowboy doll montage, WALL-E when the little robot takes care of the girl robot when she's sleeping)
People like the dog and the old couple. I know, I know, they're cute. The little fat kid too, kinda. (I don't like the little fat kid) And there is some pretty cool action sequences embedded within the stale, tired story structure that has been popular in cartoons since the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Okay, the movie's not bad, it's okay. It's like most every other cartoon ever except that you can see more scruff on the dog and the old man. So it looks cool.
So, I say okay, it's okay. I won't go beyond that.
Translation to everyone in the world:
::I am a heartless foreskin flea who wants to steal the whole milk from every baby's bottle so that I can feed the machines that will turn the baby's into energy when the sun explodes. ::
whatever
At the risk of alienating myself more from main stream society --
- The bird was the one that started following the fat kid, so its the bird's fault that the bad guy got all kooky bananas
- Like the old couple couldn't find a two week period to go to Peru in any of the 173 years that they were together? Come on. It's not like they had kids.
- What, so the fat kid never resolves things with his dad? A man who is about to die any minute is a poor substitute for a father.
- I just don't know when the old man turned into such a sour puss. He woke up one day and he was all douchey.
- Give John Ratzenberg a better character!
- The bad guy was drummed out of the country as a fraud, cast out with only one thing that could allow him to come back -- catching that bird. And this old guy and fat kid come in and take it, I'd be pissed too if i was him. And then he fell off of a flying whatchamacallit balloon into the ocean??? I truly think the bad guy got screwed.
Well, I'm not defending "Up," or even stating an opinion about it; but, if you wanted to, you could take almost any (wait, I haven't actually researched this but...) lame-ish children's (or any other, for that matter) story, and applying your reasonable logic, debunk a whole lot of them, but the deal is: did Pixar do a good job of snowing the illogic of it all with great animation and other elements of a good movie, or not? Then, we might want to talk about the manipulation of our spotless emotions and the ethics of powerful cartoons. Now, as for animation, I LOVED "The Triplets of Belleville." Did you see that?
ReplyDeleteI saw Up in a drive-in too! And within the first five minutes, all the kids were running around from car to car, bored out of their minds. What kind of children's movie loses their attention that quickly? I mean, every movie has a "Cheer Up, Charlie" moment, but not one that lasts half an hour. I think that in the beginning, Pixar was great (remember A Bug's Life? Brilliant.), but they're resisting a pull towards an older market that could make their films amazingly better. I don't know why there's a stigma that animated films have to be for children. Up clearly wasn't. If Up had cut the bullshit with the stupid dogs and had been made PG-13 or higher, Pixar could have made a huge statement. Instead, they held back. Pity.
ReplyDeleteI had also wondered about Streisand delivering the award. It seemed odd that they clearly wanted a woman to do it (obviously there were no other previous women director winners to choose from), but I'm going to give some credit to the Academy and say that they were just making a prediction.
Wait, Movie Mistress, are you saying that kids are not interested in the trials and a tribulations of the seniors in our community and their struggle to keep the real estate that they've come to own after years of mortgage payments?
ReplyDeleteTalking dogs notwithstanding, I weep for America's future.