So the movie I've got today is Pixar's Up which I never saw when it came out a few years ago. But I always heard a lot of good stuff about it and Netflix had it streaming so hey, why not?
Up
Summary: Carl always promised his wife Ellie that someday they would visit Paradise Falls, after falling in love with it after seeing the famous explorer Carl Muntz report on it as children, but they never got the chance before Ellie passed away. So, fed up with developers moving in around him and telling him to move out, Carl attaches a couple tons of balloons to his house to simply fly away instead. But traveling to South America isn't going to be that simple and the tag along Wilderness Explorer (Russel) is the least of his problems....
The Good: Lots of cute little details in this film (making fun of scouts, the dog's voices going strange, all the running gags) and I certainly cracked up more than once. I didn't notice any aimed-at-the-parents humor in this film (there probably were one or two that I just forgot) but it's a good movie for the kiddies. Nice change of setting and the whole premise of an older guy moving his house was pretty new (actually, you don't see that many older protagonists in kid's movies anyway)
The Bad: Geeze, that was the most stereotyped plot line I've seen in a movie in a loooong time. Enter the protagonist who is a good guy but currently not so happy, cue the plucky younger and/or female character who teaches the protagonist how life is worth living again (even though the protagonist has to give up their raison d'etre in the process) end of the movie. So the whole plot is my main complaint with the movie. Yes there were nice details within it but it was such a paint by the numbers deal that I just felt bored.
The Music: It's Disney so lots of orchestral music, a bit of jazz, and the period music at the beginning was a nice touch. As I've said before, music is something I notice more on a re-watch, not in the first viewing so I don't have much else to say about it. But I did really like the little bits of jazz sprinkled in the movie, never understood why I like jazz though.
The Visuals: After seeing Toy Story 3 I'm a little disappointed at the graphics here. There was nothing wrong with them per-say, but seeing something so cartoony after seeing how well Pixar can do humans now I just didn't like the CGI as much. It was pretty colorful though, just not my art style.
So, Wall-e is still my favorite recent Pixar film and with such a predictable plot I don't get why this movie go so much praise. Yes it did the predictable plot well but still, bleh, I just wanted to get more out of it. Hopefully when I see Tangled later this week that'll be more to my liking but not holding my breath over that.
