Written Movie Review - Up

By: George Karounis (El Georgerino)

Up was great. There are very few films that I go see as Summer blockbusters and expect to get any type of substance out of them other than to fill a deranged human craving for excessive carnage and explosions (as per every Michael Bay movie) or to get some kind of bubble gum sensation from watching the same watered down and redundant romantic comedies banking off the formulas of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. Pixar has usually been quite good at providing relatively intelligent animation movies where they have just the right amount of maturity and playfulness where you can walk out of a theatre not thinking that the creators were pointing and laughing at your limited intellect as they cashed their cheques and bought themselves a new Porsche.

The problem, however, with Pixar is that often times the distinction between the maturity of their stories and the creative playfulness of their dialogues and situations is that it’s a really clear cut distinction. You know when they’re being serious and you know when they’re just looking for a laugh. Up really sets the bar to a whole new level for Pixar. It seamlessly blends together scenes with the most breathtaking transitions that the emotions from one scene carry over and melt into the next. It accomplishes what most movies strive to accomplish. It’ll give you a lump in your throat while you’re gasping for air from the humour, all in the span of one scene.

The writing gives you a truly visceral reaction in every respect. And that is so well tied together with the art work. The visuals in Up are so mesmerizing and creative that each scene looks as if it were an oil paint on canvas meant to be exhibited in a museum and sold for thousands of dollars. The colours and textures are rich and exciting and the design of the characters and scenery are laudable in themselves.

The last, but most certainly not the least thing I want to talk about is the music. The great Michael Giacchino provides the soundtrack to this film, and it is beyond breathtaking. There are moments in the film where it goes for several minutes with no dialogue but yet you feel the story being told through the magnificent arrangements of the musical score. The opening scenes of the film, for instance, illustrate this point perfectly. For those who have seen this film, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. The music plays perhaps the biggest role in this movie, in my opinion, in terms of setting up the tension and release of every scene from the emotional and sensitive scenes to the action packed thrilling scenes. It’s no wonder that really the only bits of the new Star Trek I enjoyed were the musical moments, because Giacchino also did the soundtrack to that film. He’s a master and I love practically everything he does.

So in short, this is probably up there in my top five favourite movies of 2009 as well as perhaps somewhere in the running for favourite films of all time. It’s a classic buddy tale told with the traditional ease of story telling Pixar has built their reputation on.