Movie Review 31: Up

Title: Up

Director: Bob Peterson

Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes

Genre: Animation, Comedy

Carl Fredrickson (Edward Asner) in his last ditch attempt to fulfill his wife's dream to live in the Paradise Falls, modified his house into a flying house. Unfortunately, Russell (Jordan Nagai) was inadvertently caught in the middle of Carl's plans and was forced to follow Carl's journey into the depths of South Africa.

Really, by watching the previews, I knew that this movie is gonna suck. It has its funny moments, but mostly I think that it is one of the worst animation films that I have ever watched.

First, there's no super cute characters. Animals, humans, villains are all just dull and to be frank, it actually looked like claymation to me :P. The storyline might be suitable for kids but definitely not suitable for adults. It just doesn't make any sense at all!

Let's just say that it's possible for a person to attach so much balloon into his house so that it makes it float, there is no way the house would be able to handle the stress exerted by the balloons. Since his balloons are tied to several points in his chimney, that means the floor of the chimney must be strong enough to support the weight of the house or else, it's only the floor of the chimney that will float away from the house!

Also, the balloons miraculously survive a thunderstorm but will actually pop by just scratching some stone surface? Not to mention by flying up, the sun will be stronger and should pop the balloons like crazy.

Aside from the nonsensical concept, the story itself isn't much to shout about. The adventures started in South America but it doesn't really have the adrenaline driving kind of adventures. Even the climax was sort of anti climatic.

But of course, if I one do not look at the big picture, there are quite a lot of laughs here and there. And since the characters are not cute, they can't really use cute expressions to induce laughs in the audiences, that means the writers are very good in writing the jokes... just not good enough to write a decent storyline.

Really, if you go and watch the movie, after 24 hours, try to remember the characters in the movie and you'll find yourself not remembering any names... except maybe Doug for the dog :P.

It's only a movie that children might be interested in but definitely won't be successful enough to be able to market toys and gadgets of the characters.

Trivia: Carl uses sails to propel and steer his house. Sails don't work on a balloon. The sails and the balloon are both moving at the same speed as the air mass.

Bottomline: Funny but not cute

Bamboo Ranking: 2.8 / 5.0