Up, 2009 Movie

As I am having a hard time putting Anno 2205 into words, let alone a review, instead have this review of the Pixar movie Up.

Yeah, we're not in for a serious journey here, people.

So Up is an 3D animated movie by Pixar and Disney, about an elderly man who, using balloons, flies his house to South America to fulfill a promise he made to his late wife.

Despite being a kids movie, Up puts some heavy subjects on the table, most notably failure and death.  But I'll go on about the plot and my theories about what its trying to tell the viewers later.

Up is fantastic to watch, both in the animation and the cartoony style they chose to create in.  The animation flawless, and even now, more then ten years later it still looks good. The voice acting is also excellent, writing is almost perfect, and otherwise your standard good Pixar movie.  Seriously, Pixar is scarily good at making movies.  The only downside I felt when watching this movie was that the final scene(s?) felt a little over the top, but, it's about a man flying his house with balloons.  How more over the top can you get?

I would be disappointed in myself if I didn't mention the first ten minutes of the film, or rather, after the first five but before the first 10 minute mark.  The first part of the film introduces Carl the elderly man, as a kid at this time in the movie, meet his future wife, also as a kid, and set up some backstory that seems meaningless but has a point later.  After they first meet, it shows them getting married, getting jobs at a zoo, and growing old together.  It's an amazing sequence, done entirely without any dialogue or spoken words.  I would have paid admission for the movie, shown just that scene, and go out satisfied.  

Well, satisfied, except for the fact Carls wife dies at the end of that little sequence.  Yeah, kind of a downer.  But her death ties nicely into the fact that Carl views that he failed her, because he never took her on an adventure to South America.  

See, in my eyes, this movie has three things at its core: The Little Things Count, Failure, and Letting things go.  If you want to see this film and haven't,don't look any further, because SPOILERS are being discussed now, though I will try to limit them.

The theme of failure continues with the villain, who was accused of fraud, as an explorer discovering undiscovered animals and things, and spent his entire life trying capture the bird that drove him to this extent alive.

Carl is also driven to the extreme of proving that he is not a failure, to his late wife, bringing his house to Paradise Falls.  But once there, he opens up her childhood 'Adventure Book' and looks to the back, the 'Stuff I'll Do' section is not blank as he thought it was, instead, it's filled with pictures of their life, and at the end, she writes 'thanks for the adventure, now here's to your future ones!'.  This proves to him that he never failed his wife, and starts the climax of the movie.

It also ties nicely into The Little Things Count category.  None of the things Carl and his wife did were big things.  they were all small, quiet things.  Heck, the movie has Carl's kid sidekick, who he picked up on accident, even says, "I think I like the boring things the most..." when talking about his dad and how they used to hang out before they divorced.

yeah, this movie deals with some heavy things for a kids movie.  I mean, it's not groundbreaking, but it's god damn refreshing.  

The final part of the themes of Up, is Letting things go.  The villain of the piece, never does.  He is willing to kill people to get what he wants, to prove to the world he was not a fraud.  Carl eventually does let it go, and when after the climax loses his house after too many balloons are shot from it, he says, 'it's just a house'.  There's a scene early on in the film where he is trying to protect his house and its possessions from a lightning storm, frantically trying to make everything isn't damaged.  

The antithesis of that scene is after Carl lets go of his failure, and starts throwing things, all sorts of things, out of the house to lighten it up so it can fly again. 

So yeah, I love this film.  it means a lot to me, and I think my theory of the what it means is correct, and the great thing about theories about what films mean, is they're ALL correct.  or at least relevant to the person who thinks them.

Anyway, hoping I'll be able to word what I think of Anno 2205.  See you next time.