Philthy

By PHIL PALIOS

Pixar’s latest film, UP, is not just a kid’s movie about balloons.  With UP, Pixar has managed to create an entrancing, entertaining and emotional film about letting go and how all the small day-to-day events are what make up life’s big adventure.  I believe the crowning achievement of this film is its success at connecting with both children and adults to communicate the same message.  While I am not a fan of spoilers, I can’t help but reveal some details of the story to help provide an understanding of why UP is worth seeing, seeing again, and buying.  This animated feature stars two characters: Carl, a 78-year-old retired balloon salesman and Russell, an 8-year-old Junior Wilderness Explorer.  While Carl seeks to fulfill his life-long dream of grand adventure with his wife, Ellie, a promise he was not able to complete before she passed away, he is joined by Russell, who has yet to experience the actual outdoors, despite his plethora of merit badges.

For many, the image of a house floating through the sky while tied to thousands of balloons is reason enough to see UP.  However, that wasn’t enough for me.  It wasn’t until seeing the preview with Carl’s grumpy-old-man character selfishly denying the young Wilderness Explorer entry into his house as it floats through the sky that I knew this was a movie I had to see.  The wonderful thing about Pixar films is that the nature of their production forces them to only release magnificent work.  The cost of creating an animated feature causes all of Pixar’s films to be “big budget.”  For example, their 2003 hit Finding Nemo cost approx. $90 million to make.  This high production cost trickles down to a quality bar that is not seen among many of the movies that come out.  When a studio invests this much in a film, their box office needs are much higher than the average film, only because they need to recover the high production costs.  But the model works, Pixar made over $850 million on Finding Nemo, proving that expensive computer-animated films can be quite profitable.   But you can’t just dump $90+ million on a group of animators and engineers, making it all come together to achieve these big box office numbers requires some of the best story telling in the movie business.

The story of UP is far from unique and is one seen often among books and movies, yet nevertheless important: cherish every day, because it’s the everyday moments that make up life’s grand adventure.  The director, Pete Docter, a Pixar veteran, was able to build a strong emotional tie between the audience and the feature’s lead characters, communicating the film’s message with brilliant success.  Over the course of a fast-paced sequence at the beginning of UP covering the time Carl spent with his wife, was all it took for me to understand why Carl was such a grumpy old man.  After being lucky enough to spend his life in love with Ellie, he was never able to live up to his initial promise of an adventure like that of their idol, Charles Muntz.  When discussing the way in which he crafted the story for UP, Docter refers to the words of Walt Disney: “For every laugh there should be a tear.” and this rings true with UP.  After building a relationship with Carl and Russell, it is easy to understand their struggles and relate them to your own.  UP lives up to Disney’s mantra (no pun intended), for as many hilarious moments there are scenes that pull on the strings of your heart.  It’s not just me either; the audience reaction throughout the film demonstrated how well the filmmakers were able to connect to everyone in the audience.  While the main theme of UP is not rare, it is helpful to have a solid reminder of such an important message as we experience our own everyday lives.

When considering the technical aspects of UP, one has to wonder: “How many balloons are tied to that house?”  This question is addressed by Steve May, Supervising Technical Director, in the film’s production notes:  “One of our toughest assignments on this film was creating the balloon canopy that carries Carl’s house to South America.”  Rough calculations by the technical team estimated a need for 20 to 30 million balloons to actually lift a house from the ground, assuming you disregard all of the problems one might face when trying to take a house off of its foundation in one piece.  The team took the task seriously, wanting the balloons to appear as realistic as possible.  May continues: “We ended up using 10,297 for most of the floating scenes, and 20,622 when it actually lifts off.  The number varies from shot to shot depending on the angle, the distance, and fine-tuning the size so that it feels interesting, believable and visually simple.”

Seeing as Pixar’s films are created in 3D it’s not surprising that they are beginning to release the films in a 3D format, the conversion process can’t be that difficult, and they have much more control over the 3D rendering than a live-action film does!  However 3D is something that has taken the film industry a long time to get right, and while it is evolving, the jury is still out on if the current 3D trend catches on.  This was the first time I saw a movie in 3D that wasn’t at a theme park.  I think that Pixar did a great job at building a 3D experience, but I’m not sure how important it was, or how much it added to the story. 

When I reflect on my experience watching UP, the highlight wasn’t “Oooh, it’s in 3D!”  I was much more entranced by what a great story they put together than how good the 3D effect was.  So the best thing I can say about the 3D is that it did not detract from the film in any way, I don’t think I really was aware of the fact that it was in 3D after the first few minutes.  I am the type of person who gets immersed in the story and the number of speakers in the theatre or lines of resolution on the projector don’t really matter to me unless they detract from the story telling.

While I didn’t notice much of an impact by the use of 3D, reading the film’s production notes reveals that not only did Director Pete Docter pay special attention to the 3D aspect of the film, Pixar created an entirely new division dedicated to using 3D as a new way of adding to their story telling ability.  Docter says:

 ”For example, at the beginning of the film, Carl is stuck in his ways and he’s living in this little house.  We wanted it to feel claustrophobic so we flattened everything–we made it purposely less deep.  Contrast that later when he gets to South America.  We wanted this expansiveness–we wanted you to feel the wind in your face, so we really pushed depth there.  We look at 3D as another crayon in our crayon box.”

Perhaps Pixar did so well with their use of 3D that the effect was subliminal and I just never noticed.  But, there’s an equal possibility that despite their efforts this is an area they can still improve on.  Regardless, I’m just glad it wasn’t like riding on a roller coaster.

It’s really easy to make a bad 3D movie, if you doubt this, just make sure to arrive in time for the previews before UP.  Some of the previews made me and many others in the audience verbally complain of feeling sick and take off our 3D glasses.  I think that most filmmakers are so excited about their “new toy” in making 3D movies they think it can be a distraction and people will come see their movie because it’s in 3D, no matter how bad the story is.  The good news is, gauging from my experience and those in the theatre with me, these filmmakers won’t be in business for long.  I’m glad that Pixar did not take this gimmicky approach.  It will take more films, like UP, which approach 3D with caution and creativity to determine whether the effect can really help tell a story and be worth using.

 Getting back to the story of Carl and Russell, if you don’t see UP for the great comedy and touching moments or 3D effect, the artwork alone is a stunning masterpiece.  While starting out in the city, the film quickly moves to the wilderness as the story unfolds and there are gorgeous landscapes and wildlife in scene after scene.  I highly recommend checking out the UP website and browsing through the Gallery section to get an idea of what to expect.  The character animation is also astounding; Pixar continues to evolve the art of bringing animated characters to life. 

I can’t possibly think of a person who wouldn’t appreciate UP, and that is probably part of Pixar’s criteria for green lighting such a big production.  I hope you will enjoy the film as much as I did!