Movie Review: UP
Categories: Blogs, Featured, Movie Reviews
Written By: Mark Casey
Rating: 
Oh my god, this movie made me so sad. Not particularly because it was the first Pixar movie I can remember which disappointed me (I never saw The Incredibles), but because this is a sad, sad movie.
The story opens with two folks falling in love and growing old together, with the shared dream of going to a place in South America called Paradise Falls. Of course, life intervenes, and they don’t get to go, and the woman dies. And man, it is sad! But it’s also beautiful and moving and eloquent and wonderful.
If the filmmakers had ended the movie after the first 10 or 15 minutes, it would be perfect. Academy award caliber, even. But after that, the actual movie starts happening. You know, the one about the old man and the little boy and the floating house? Yeah, that’s the movie people are buying tickets for, so it’s no surprise that they show that part. But it just isn’t as good.
It’s an old man, cranky and alone as the world around his adorable little house starts to become overdeveloped and not cool. But he fights back. He fights back so hard, actually, that a big mean corporate man gets a court to say he needs to move into an old folk’s home for his safety and the safety of others.
But guess what? The old man has other plans, and instead of moving out, he moves his entire house. He moves it straight UP (get it?). His plan is to go to Paradise Falls like he always wanted to, and aside from the minor inconvenience of a young boy scout who accidentally tags along, he gets there in about 12 hours somehow.
The movie is about the old man and the boy scout rediscovering themselves socially and emotionally through each other, but the two have absolutely no chemistry and no meaningful moments. That whole theme just falls flat, and the jokes from either one of them are in short supply. Nothing funny and nothing moving.
Something which is absolutely hilarious, however, is the fact that once they get to Paradise Falls, they meet a giant, tropical, colorful, flamboyant female bird, which the kid promptly names “Steve,” which is great. And he refers to the female bird as Steve throughout the movie, and I enjoyed that immensely, as I did the bird’s odd squawks and squeeks, which proved that Steve the Bird was the only character with any sense of comedic timing at all.
There is also a big fat cute dumb dog named Doug which is also funny, but much less so than he could be. Doug the Dog belongs to an old timey explorer who has been living in Paradise Falls for years and searching for Steve the Bird. He also inexplicably breeds hundreds of male dogs and outfits them with collars that allow them to talk. This fact gives the filmmakers the perfect opportunity to write flat, trite, unfunny dialog worse than what is found in the most terrible of the many Warner Brothers Talking Dog Summer Comedies.
The old timey explorer is after Steve the bird, and thus also after the old man and boy. The bulk of the movie is a cat and mouse game between the two parties, and it’s completely unfunny, predictable and uninspiring. It’s also peppered throughout with sad, sad, sad moments referencing the old man’s dead wife and lost life. But the bigger tragedy than the man’s lack of direction is the fact that the movie doesn’t have one, either.
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