Saturday, February 10, 2018

Is 'Up' Pixar's worst animated film?

When it comes to animated films, it's not exactly a secret that I prefer watching animations over live action films. I prefer watching animations because watching them puts me on a better mood and makes me feel better about life in general.

Especially when it comes to films made by Pixar studios, I have almost always enjoyed their animations. Whether we're talking about Ratatouille, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles or Wall-E, I have found their films to be well made and entertaining.

Still, that doesn't mean that Pixar has always managed to entertain me and make me happy. Especially when it comes to their animation 'Up', I have found the film to be really disappointing and lacking when it comes to its overall quality.

The biggest reason that I haven't been able to enjoy 'Up', is that unlike in almost every other Pixar film, the story in this film is entirely too inconsistent. There are too many problems with the story and how it's put together.

Probably the biggest problem with the film is that its main story is told during its first twelve minutes. After the first part - that includes the main character being a child, growing up, getting married, getting old and losing his wife - the movie runs out of story.

Yet, instead of this 'short film' about Carl and his wife Ellie wrapping itself after those solid twelve minutes, the film goes on for another seventy-five minutes. The movie goes on, even though there's basically no story left to tell and nothing for the characters to do.

What is especially awful about this extended part of the movie is that it forgets what the first part was about. During the second part of the movie, the 'laws' of the first part's universe get thrown out and the animation becomes more or less a different film.

For example, in the second part of the film, the story 'restarts' when our main character Carl decides to fly away with his house that has thousands of helium filled balloons tied to it. He flies away after he receives a court order to move into a retirement home.

This 'balloon house' itself might not be too much to swallow - but when you add things like a 110 year old villain and talking dogs that fly airplanes into the mix, the story falls apart. The movie just gets completely ridiculous and implausible.

Especially when it comes to us getting introduced to those talking dogs in South America, the complete lack of direction and continuity in the film becomes obvious. You can't help but to shake your head in disbelief when this happens.

What is really unfortunate about all these problems with the story is that when you consider all those other aspects of the film, there aren't really any problems here. Everything else except the story is really well made in 'Up'.

After all, it's obvious that the director of the film, the animation department, the voice actors, the composer and the rest of the crew worked really hard on the movie. They did everything they could to make film as good as it could only be.

Still, when it comes to the film as a whole, the story in 'Up' does not work well enough. There are too many problems with the screenplay that cannot be overlooked and be forgiven just because this happens to be a Pixar film.

In that sense, when you think of 'Up' as a movie and compare it to those other animations that the studio has produced, it's pretty clear that 'Up' is not one of their best films. This Pixar film is not even close to being one of their better animations.

After all, even though the production values in the movie are very high, that's not good enough. It's not enough to come up with an 'interesting' premise and think that one good idea is all that it takes to write a great screenplay.

On the contrary, it takes a lot more than a good idea for a short film to turn it into a full length movie. It takes a lot more work and effort to be able to come up with characters and storylines that make sense from start finish.

In that sense, it's unfortunate that the writers weren't able to come up with good stuff here. They weren't able come up with a screenplay that had the potential to entertain and to keep us happy throughout the movie.

As unfortunate as it is, instead of paying attention to the basics, they gave up and took the easy way out. They took the easy way out and settled with ideas that didn't make sense and that didn't have enough potential to turn into a great story.

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