Great Animation, I should stop saying that… Pixar sets the bar and exceeds them each year and the quality does not surprise me anymore.

Good Movie. Good, not Great. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movie – a lot. But I am just starting to wear from the bubblegum cartoons that are starting to represent more of Disney and less of the Pixar I loved in Monsters, Inc., Ratatouille and Wall E. I am not sure if it is the director or the studio that results in creating streamlined one-dimensional characters that are designed for children.

American animation studios are generally stuck in making formulaic movies, having simple single dimensional characters that are easy for kids to relate to, have enough visual gags and some toilet humor for the kids amusement, have adult in-jokes, puns, gags and references to keep the adult parents happy and have a moral at the end. It sells tickets and that is a good business plan when investing millions. But Pixar has stood out of this crowd. On top of the formula, the Pixar directors managed to weave good and sometimes complex plots and characters. Think of Wall-E, the robot, Mr. Incredible, Sully from Monsters Inc. and Mr. Carl Fredrickson from Up. No other American Animation studio has a repertoire of such characters in their films ans that is Pixar’s strength.

But Pixar has its failings. They are built on top of the formula and the foundation is their Achilles heel. The movies fail to travel too far from the formula. Many characters are kept intentionally simple, this is true especially of the Villains. Syndrome was a confused kid in the Incredibles but since the focus was on the family, they made him almost purely evil. They did the same to the Axiom central computer in Wall-E and almost did it to the chef Skinner in Ratatouille. Up has a similar failing with Explorer Charles Muntz. He is not really a bad guy. He has been living in the wild with dogs for 60 odd years and is eager to clear his name in the ‘civilized’ world. He is eccentric and pissed off in his pursuit of the ‘Bird’. But I am not sure that would make him such a straightforward evil guy. I’d wish that he was more confused and eccentric rather than a bad character. Probably that is just me.

The beginning of the movie was awesome. The first 10 minutes were perfect. Great music and a bit fast paced, but I will take it. Elley was a real complex character, I wanted to see more of her, but I was left out as was Carl. You don’t see that often in animation, forget animation, you don’t see that often in most movies. The dogs were awesome and probably the most complete characters – So fickle minded, they lose focus with  the slightest distraction. I wished Charles Muntz was like that too. That would have been great. Carl was great as a grumpy old man and he was like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino without the foul mouth and the guns . It would have been fun if he did have a foul mouth though. I am guess it may never happen. Animations cannot recover cost if they have a R rating. Damn.

There is a lot of emphasis on spectacle in Animated movies. More so for Up, I am guessing it is because it was made for 3D and they needed to ‘Wow’ the viewer. I didnt care much for that. Overall the movie was impressive, and lot better than most of the other animations this year. I have not watched Coraline and that seems impressive and extremely creative from the trailers. Need to get hold of a DVD. Previews of ’9′ seem impressive. I am intrigued and waiting to watch.

It would seem that I am not totally ‘wowed’ by Up. That is not true. The movie is awesome. I am just having extremely high expectations when heading to a Pixar Movie and end up focusing on the flaws. It is also likely that I am ever more strongly attracted to the slow pacing and dry wit in Ghibli style movies that bubble gummy gags don’t tickle my fancy much. Pixar seems to walk the tight rope between these two styles and slip a little either way. I am not complaining but wary of their future movies. Toy story 3? Monsters Inc 2? Not sure how these are going to pan out…

Related posts:

1. Film festival gamble
2. war, what is it good for?
3. Madagaacar – movie review
4. On Gran Torino
5. Keeping it slow

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 7:00 pm and is filed under movie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.