It was pretty good, though it’s getting hard to imagine a BAD Pixar movie at this point. I mean, they have to screw up EVENTUALLY right? I still like Wall-E and The Incredibles more, but it was still an enjoyable movie.
One thing that struck me was how the movie essentially front-ended all the emotion and heart. The first fifteen minutes or so are touching and quite bittersweet. I read one review that compared that part of the movie to something that Miyazaki would do. Perhaps that would be a bit excessive, but it’s certainly a pleasant change to see what appears to be a kid’s adventure movie spend so much time honestly trying to get us to care about the main character’s life instead of just jumping in with the action and the one-liners.
You have to ignore the many, many impossibilities of the movie, keeping in mind it DOES take place in today’s world, but so much that happens is not possible. But that’s not the point. If you can ignore the impossible then the movie is charming. If you can’t, well, lighten up
The ‘talking’ dog steals the show as far as comedy goes. The kid is a bit annoying, but he’s supposed to be. I kinda wish the trailers didn’t give away who the villain was though. While it still would have been fairly obvious when he first appeared it’s nice to have SOME mystery. I think the trailers for Up did it better when they revealed almost nothing. I remember the first one was just of main character Carl floating upwards on his house saying ‘Afternoon’, and that was all.
But hey, they need to hook the audience. While the the truly great part of the movie is at the start, the rest of it is entirely entertaining. I saw it in ‘Tru-3D’ and it made far better use of it than Monsters vs Aliens did, though I still think Coraline is tops in that department.
I’m glad to hear that it’s as fun-yet-touching as all Pixar movies are. I too keep wondering, “When will Pixar let me down?” I thought it would with “Cars” -but no, it was great. Then with Ratatoille -and in fact, of all the Pixar movies I think it’s the least inspired, but damn if it didn’t make me laugh! And now, once again, here’s a premise that I just don’t think would be very interesting… but I trust Pixar by now. It’s their details to the story- and the humanity they give their characters, even the blatantly nonhuman ones, that make their movies work so well.
And of course the movie doesn’t pass the (full) reality test- the very premise is absurd! But, I don’t mind stories like that - I only mind when we only find out how illogical things are supposed to be AFTER we buy into the movie. If I know it’s cartoony from the start, I’m all set to go.
Note: the place the old man ends up on- that weird mesa? It’s real, not invented for the movie. The Pixar people actually sent their artists to Venezuela to study it. Now that’s dedication to “realism!”
I think the question here is why would anybody want Pixar to letdown? They are the only movie company right now that’s been consistent with its movie quality and I just don’t see how that’s a bad thing.
i just watched a spanish trailer for it on youtube. i’m not sure if i’d be less confused if it was in english. it does look interesting but i don’t want to go see it and find out thats all it is. has anybody seen it yet? was it worth your time?
Emotional moments still occur later in the movie, as the characters change. The introduction is to set the emotional tone from nothing so that it may be changed from the standard.
This seems like a kind of strange statement to make about a cartoon. The impossibilities are not there to be ignored; they’re the central conceit of the medium.
I thought it was worth my time, yes. I’m also considerably less enamoured by Pixar than most (I liked neither Cars nor Ratatouille), so I suppose that limits fanboy bias possibilities.
If Pixar had been around for the last 30 or so years and the executive producer had just died and his team of animators were getting so long in the tooth that they wanted to take no more risks to innovate new animation techniques then yes I’d have something to worry about too but until then I’m just going to let the good times roll on (though they probably should try innovating a new animation technique or two while they’re at it).
After seeing Up, I’m having difficulty not seeing it as an allegory about the dangers of attachment to the physical world. My major really fucked me up.
I don’t know, I’d say that’s a fair interpretation. The message was clearly that experiences (Adventures!) matter more than the material gain; the house going to Paradise Falls wasn’t important, at all. The sash and badges didn’t matter, it was the ceremony of pinning them and the presence of a father. The personification of the kind of exploration and adventure that brings back corpses or takes mothers from children is the villain of the movie, as the perversion of its great ideal.
When Disney took over, I thought that Mouse inc. would suck all the creative juices out of Pixar. Then I heard about Pixar’s upcoming (at that time) film starring small rodents, and I felt like this was an ominous sign: Mickey self-advertising through his new acquisition.
Well, so far so good, the juices are still flowing. As long as Mr. “Apple” Jobs retains his seat on Disney’s board, and other Pixar top honchos – like Lasseter and Catmull – are taking care of business (and acting as a buffer zone), Pixar should be ok for a while.
I hope…
Lasseter specifically agreed to sell Pixar to Disney ONLY if he and his crew retained creative control. Which is probably why their CGI movies still rock. Pixar is simply a (still) idealistic studio, making movies not based on what’s popular but rather on what they love.
Disney hasn’t made a truly great movie on their own since the 90’s. Their next animated movie is another Fairy Tale, The Princess and the Frog, though now it’s set in… New Orleans? And starring Black characters! My cynical side cannot help but think that’s so they can add an African-American princess to their Princesses toy line. Let’s see how good it turns out…
I generally don’t care about animated movies, but Lilo & Stitch came out in 2002. I seem to recall that film being universally well-received. Like, on the par with their early 1990s films.
Lilo & Stitch was good but it was no Aladdin or Beauty and The Beast- it was just a cute cartoon movie, though granted it was popular enough to deserve a TV series and a sequel. (Then again, Disney sequels EVERYTHING they do these days, how many direct-to-video sequels has 101 Dalmatians have by now? Four? I think that’s part of why they lost touch with their material- too much focus on merchandising, not enough on creativity.)
