For me, it’s because I’m largely blind in my left eye and can’t resolve the images properly. A film in 3-D will never have me in the audience for that reason.
I just saw Up and really enjoyed it. I loved the characters–especially the dog (although the henchmen dogs were pretty over-the-top). The story was good and the animation was gorgeous.
The 3D was used to good effect. It added a bit of depth to the ‘up-close’ shots and enhanced the sense of distance to the wide shots of the landscape and the aerial scenes, while avoiding any gimmicky pop-out-of-the-screen effects.
Looking forward to seeing all three Toy Story movies in 3D!
You could call it a Disney tradition. According to the Up trivia page, eight animated Disney villains have had a long fall to an implied death (scroll to the bottom). Muntz is the first Pixar villain to do so.
I read that and it said Scar did also. I thought he was implied killed by the hyenas.
I just got home from seeing Up in 3D tonight and I enjoyed it.
I really liked the animation. Pixar, as always, simply nailed the look and feel of the movie. The 3D was utilized perfectly. Having seen a few 3D movies and TV shows the cliched…here it comes! In your face!…moments are silly and beneath Pixar. Gladly they avoided it and the 3D perfectly added depth and wonder to the setting and motion. The way they used it to give a great sense of height was really impactful.
The themes of the movie were interesting and unique for animation. I especially enjoyed the commentary about adventures and wistful dreaming and it’s value compared to having a simple but complete life at home. In a way it’s a “the grass is not always greener” message.
[Maxwell Smart]But…they missed it by that much![/Maxwell Smart]
I’m really struggling to figure out what fell short for me. I’m a huge Pixar fan and I had really high expectations about this movie. Perhaps they’ve simply conditioned me to expect too much. I liked the movie, but I have this nagging feeling that there was a much better movie just hiding in there waiting to come out.
As much as I enjoyed the opening montage with Carl and Ellie I felt like they pulled some emotional punches. It’s almost as if they glossed over Carl’s thought processes as he bought the airline tickets to South America and the disappointment and tragedy of her falling ill before he could surprise her with the gift. The right idea was there, it should have been utterly heart-wrenching but the execution was just a little off pace and I felt obliquely sad about it but I never really felt the empathy for Carl I should have.
Similarly they implied Carl’s sadness and reclusiveness after Ellie died and left him alone but it wasn’t really driven home. I feel like I needed shots of him grieving or missing her company. They had a call back to him cleaning the window without her on the other side and eating alone but I never really felt like Carl was hurting. I appreciated the attachment to the mailbox and logically I understood his overreaction to it being damaged but I don’t think they gave developed the depth of his feelings about it to make it really stirring.
Perhaps the attempt to keep it kid friendly is the culprit. I suppose seeing Carl weeping and bitter could have put off too many kids and they preferred subtlety. In Toy Story 2 there is absolutely nothing subtle about Jessie’s song and it’s one of the most memorable animated moments ever. In documentary interviews with the Pixar guys they openly debated including that scene and were discouraged by the Disney folks. In the end they kept it and it made the movie, perhaps there were similar feelings about Carl and Ellie’s sad moments and the fact that they are human characters instead of toys made it too risky.
I think as an adult I’d have much preferred that montage to be a little more dramatic and Carl’s despair to be a bit more harrowing. Then, when Carl musters his courage and determination to not go quietly I would have been all the more inspired. When those balloons rise up behind the house I’d have been forced to cheer out loud. The way they did it, it was just…meh. All in all, I felt like it robbed me of having a real relationship with Carl. I just didn’t care along the way as much as I should have.
Later in the movie the irrational attachment Carl has to the house would have been more powerful had they better shown how completely it personified his last attachment to Ellie. I needed the climactic moment when Carl abandons Kevin to save the house to be the wild, illogical actions of a desperate man. It would have made the revelation when he read Ellie’s scrapbook that much more jarring if we’d have seen Carl being more emotionally tied to his house and Ellie essentially saving him from a madness of grief and solitude.
I know all these idea are in the movie. I know they are all implied and they were considered. I just felt like they were toned down just a bit. Carl was so close to being a heartbreaking character who was redeemed in a hugely dramatic way but they just…fell…short.
I found Kevin to be a a little less adorable than he needed to be too. A big annoying bird didn’t exactly inspire sympathy in me or fear for him. When Carl abandoned him to save the house I basically agreed with Carl’s choice. The bird wasn’t cute enough or helpless enough for me to really think Carl should sacrifice everything for him. I never really was convinced of Russell’s attachment to him. He wasn’t nearly adorable enough or helpless enough to be Russell’s special pet. If anything Russell was Kevin’s pet. The bird was important to the plot and I realize it was a mommy bird, but I never really found myself thinking Muntz was particularly evil for wanting to capture it. Perhaps if we’d have seen Kevin caring for his babies or the babies in some more immediate peril I’d have felt more urgency in seeing him safe and free.
I liked the movie a lot, and they didn’t really do anything wrong. They just didn’t quite grab me and squeeze me like they could have. The themes were serious and adult and they needed to embrace that. There was enough comic relief, adventure and redemption to balance it out and it’s a shame they didn’t really dig in.
High points:
Dogs pouring the wine all over the place and accidentally getting some into the serving glasses.
Dogs stealing the hotdog and orange juice.
“I was hiding on your porch because I love you.”
Geriatric sword fight.
And best of all, the cloud baby-maker short film.
Low points:
Fighter planes.
Annoying kid.
The bad guy.
Alpha.
overall I really enjoyed it… I did give a big “What? Seriously” to the jump cut from middle America to their destination. Even a stock montage of them floating over landmarks as trite as it would be, tops “Oh we’re here!”
I wanted to see a g-damn flying house!
I know that they couldn’t have done this because… well… people hate reading… but I’d rather have had the dogs subtitled rather than talking.
Best visual was the after Carl hits the guy with his cane and recoils back into his house and the crowd is watching from the street…“evil” developer calmly puts his hand on Carl’s fence. It was chilling.
Yeah, without saying a word. I’m not even sure he had a mouth.
I think the reason they didn’t do that is because it would have been really hard to explain how the other characters could see the subtitles.
If you use subtitles, wouldn’t that sort of make the translating collars pointless? Their talking was the joke, not a sop to people who can’t read.
…where’s the “no duh” emoticon.
In hindsight I might not have made myself clear… but certainly not that ridiculous.
I’m not saying subtitle the dogs and keep their talking collars. I was saying lose the collars have the dogs “talk” to each other. The humana didn’t need to KNOW anything the dogs communicated to them that couldn’t have been pantomined or “Lassie”-ed to them.
I found the talking dogs really odd. Funny yes, but really out of place.
I agree–the dogs were hilarious, but totally out of place in this film.
I liked the film, but hated the 3D. I didn’t realize that the theater we were going to had the film in 3D, much less only in 3D, or I wouldn’t have gone there in the first place.
To add insult to injury, the theater charged us an additional $2.50 a ticket (total of $12.00 a ticket for adults!) for the dubious benefit of the 3D, so I was completely ticked off even before going into the theater.
I hate 3D. I usually get a splitting headache watching 3D movies. Even when it doesn’t give me a headache, it either screws with the colors (for the red/blue glasses) or washes them all out (like wearing polarized sunglasses inside). I would much preferred to have seen the movie in 2D with more vivid colors.
Worse the film was out of focus. I have noticed this becoming more and more of a problem in theaters lately, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 3D movie in the theater that was in focus. It’s useless complaining, too. They used to make an effort into correcting an out-of-focus movie when you complained, but now they just ignore you. With a 3D movie, they would just blame that for any perceived lack of focus.
So all in all, between the 3D and lack-of-focus, I hated the look of the movie I saw. I’m looking forward to seeing it when it comes out on DVD. 
On the flipside, I found that one of the movie’s strengths was its portrayal of the more subtle and day-to-day aspects of a profound lost. One of the things that really tied me to Carl’s character was that his grief over losing Ellie wasn’t portrayed in a melodramatic manner.
I think that, especially for a children’s movie, the choice to portray the real tragedy of Carl having to live out his life, even the mundane aspects, without Ellie there, was, as another poster commented, quite brave.
When watching the movie, I did initially hope that Muntz wouldn’t become the villain (which was stupid of me, because I knew from trailers that he did), but when it actually happened I had no problem with it.
I also agree with those who were shocked by the reality of Carl’s assault on the surveyor or whatever he was. There were many audible gasps in the theater when Carl drew blood, mine among them.
Also, I cried throughout the entire thing. The opening short was traumatizing enough (“The poor cloud!” boo hoo), as was the Carl/Ellie montage, but then the hits just kept on coming, with Russell, Carl’s sadness, Dug, etc…
“I was hiding under your porch because I LOVE you” had me just about bawling.
But that’s been done a million time–absurd dog charades to let them know Timmy’s down the well is such a cliche. This was unusual, cleverly rendered, and an opportunity for new avenues of humor.
Agreed. For instance, one of the biggest laughs in the theater I was in was Dug’s joke about the squirrel.
“It is funny because the squirrel gets dead!”
That I didn’t think fit at with within the context of the narrative. It felt like they realized the movie was lacking humor, and shoe-horned in these talking dogs.
Again, I liked them, I just wish they were in a different movie.
“In the dog stories, they always made it so that the grownups could talk to animals and they don’t! They’re not that bright! When it comes to animals, grownups are not that bright! I know people, grownups, who own dogs, have had dogs 10-20 years. Live in New York and the dog is barking in the apartment. And I say, ‘What’s the matter with your dog?’ He says, ‘I dunno.’ And then the dog peed all over everything. They’re just not that bright!” - Bill Cosby
The funniest dog “bit” (heh) to me was the quick shot of the dogs playing poker. I burst out laughing at that, but the scene was so brief that I think a lot of the adults in the theater missed it, and the kids probably didn’t get that joke anyway.
I didn’t get it either.
Probably the quintessential example of bad art.