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Friday, June 05, 2009
Evaluating Pixar’s Up
Evaluative criticism is something’s been discussed a bit around here. While I remain skeptical about it as a central activity in the academic study of literature (and other arts), it certainly is central in considering new work. Case in point, Pixar’s Up. So far the movie’s garnered good to rave reviews, scoring 98% at Rotten Tomatoes and pumping out the routine praise and appreciation (though there are a few skeptics) at Cartoon Brew.
Mike Barrier is rather more skeptical, and has said so, giving well-considered reasons. He’s gotten some comments on his views as well, some agreeing, some not. I’ve sent him two notes agreeing with him, the film just doesn’t hang together. The component parts are not well suited to one another and to the whole.
What’s particularly interesting is that the film is just implausible. “Well of course it’s implausible,” you say, “it’s a fantasy. It’s supposed to be implausible.” And that’s what’s interesting. You go into the film knowing it’s about an old man who manages to fly his house around suspended beneath a bunch of ordinary helium balloons. You accept that as a premise going in. And still, it’s implausible. I’d say that it failed to maintain it’s own internal logic, but I’m not sure the film ever managed to assert a logic long enough to matter.
Now, making that argument well, and in detail. That would be something. But at least Barrier and his commenters have made a start.
EDIT: While we’re at it, Linda Holms wonders why Pixar has yet to have a female lead:
Of the ten movies you’ve released so far, ten of them have central characters who are boys or men, or who are anthropomorphized animals or robots or bugs who are voiced by and imagined as boys or men. These movies feature women and girls to varying degrees—The Incredibles, in particular—but the story is never “a girl and the things that happen to her,” the way it’s “a boy and what happens to him.”
I want so much for girls to have a movie like Up that is about someone they can dress up as for Halloween, as Anika Noni Rose said about starring as the voice in The Princess And The Frog. Not a girl who’s a side dish, but a girl who’s the big draw.
And I’d really, really like it not to be a princess.
A bit later she observes of Ellie in Up that she “is warm and hilarious, ambitious and fearless, and then gone for most of the movie. She provides the engine for the story, in many ways, but it’s an old man and a little boy who actually get to hit the gas.”
Given the Pixar team’s oft-expressed admiration for Miyazaki, this is a rather odd blindness on their part.
Comments
I’d say that it failed to maintain it’s own internal logic, but I’m not sure the film ever managed to assert a logic long enough to matter.
I’d agree with you on the first point here-- when the man from the nursing home observes out loud that Carl’s yard is filled with helium containers, and the house then begins to lift off the ground, I remember thinking, “Why bother to include the explanatory detail of how he filled the balloons when the premise of lifting a house with balloons is already clearly beyond explanation to begin with?”
It’s not as if, with no helium containers, we would’ve seen the house lift off the ground and then objected: “WAIT A MINUTE-- THIS IS RIDICULOUS-- HOW DID HE FILL THOSE BALLOONS UP WITHOUT HELIUM?!”
The problem seems to me, though, not so much that the film didn’t “maintain it’s own internal logic,” but maybe that it bothered to maintain an internal logic at all, laboring to provide “logical” explanations for essentially absurd occurrences. I guess this means I don’t agree that the house needed to have plumbing hanging out of the bottom of it for the film to make sense-- but if they weren’t going to provide the plumbing, it is fair to say that they shouldn’t have bothered with the helium containers either.
The film kept tripping over itself trying to provide reasons when it should’ve more fully embraced its own arbitrariness-- we’re supposed to take it for granted that a man can fly his house to South America in an evening, but then we need an extended explanation as to why Muntz hasn’t been able to capture the big bird? (The bird lives in a maze that Muntz always loses dogs in, which we hear of once and then is never brought up again.)
We sit quietly through a bare-bones montage that reduces the complexity of married life into a few colorful and simplistic scenes, but then we need all this explicative fluffle about the evil city developer and Carl going to court and the forced move to a retirement home to explain why Carl ends up taking to the air?
But why, exactly, do you think this is implausible in the context of the film?
Now, making that argument well, and in detail. That would be something.
Yes, it would.
Look, I’ll be frank. I liked Up, but Barrier’s response doesn’t really offer much to ponder. He didn’t like the silliness of it, the way the characters look, and thought the opening montage was a cheesy ploy. I mean, okay, but surely there is something more substantial than that which one can dig into in order to really say something both evaluative and critically interesting.
To be fair, it’s late and I’m not in the mood to mount an extended defense of the film, so maybe I shouldn’t expect an extended take-down, either. But really, if your starting point is the film’s plausibility, that’s really a losing battle. It’s not like Up holds some sort of record for implausibility in PIXAR’s animated efforts. (Nor, as Barrier argues, does it “over-explain” things either.)
Gee, BIll, your film posts read like Steve Martin’s Johnny Carson journal.
“WALL-E, Dark Knight, Up: Sluggish, sluggish, sluggish.
Not that UP is completely unassailable, but judging a children’s movie (or anything) on petty narrative inconsistency seems like a juvenile approach to criticism, as well as a tremendous waste of time. I can’t even really believe I’m typing this comment.
Pixar’s success has everything to do with a fluent style and a traditionally humanistic approach to subject matter. They speak a very old film language very well, and audiences are responding. Such fluency tends to withstand the details.
Cruss: Interesting point, as though they provide just enough explanatory material to betray the need for more explanations, which they don’t provide. But I don’t think utter chaos would have worked either. They just needed either to stick to a more or less real world, with fantasy elements, or invent a coherent fantasy world.
Tom: The problem’s not so much one of flat-out implausibility as it is one of inconsistency. As Michael Sporn mentioned in one of his comments, “The problem is that the film makers started making a film built on a reality with slight fantasy then turned it into a fantastic film with no grasp on their own reality."*
tomemos: you forgot the new Star Trek: Sluggish. But I liked Coraline, wildly implausible though it is.
Derek: No one’s saying there’s nothing to like in the film, it’s just that all the likable elements don’t add up to a coherent work of art.
*For some reason Michael Sporn’s blog is “blacklisted,” so I can’t post a link to it. Mike Barrier has a link to Sporn’s post & comments here.
I was moved by the opening sequence. It’s hard not to be because you bring yourself to it. (Luckily the theater was empty so no one would witness me choking bit while my 4 year old daughter whispered questions) Maybe a Turing test should be administered to those at the films exit who feel absolutely nothing.
Of course its manipulation but I thought it set a nice tone. I think the ability to jump start feelings toward a character so early on was impressive. In fact, I think many of the adults that are moved in the film in the beginning are less moved in the latter photo flipping scene because of the clutter and weight of the frenetic activity that’s wedged between.
Of course its manipulation but I thought it set a nice tone.
The need to ‘concede’ that some feature of a work of art is manipulation - as if anything in art were anything else - is perverse and has nothing to do with the montage in question, which was beautiful. Bill’s carping misses the point(s), of course, but so what? These conversations have nothing to do with story.
Waxbanks, exactly. I was also puzzled by Cruss’s description of the opening as “reduc[ing] the complexity of married life into a few colorful and simplistic scenes.” I believe this is a process known as “art.”
I think the ability to jump start feelings toward a character so early on was impressive.
I don’t think so. At this level of expertise it’s routine.
.... has nothing to do with the montage in question, which was beautiful.
And wasted by the subsequent film.
Bill’s carping misses the point(s), of course, but so what? These conversations have nothing to do with story.
And ????
I believe this is a process known as “art.”
And, as I said, the artfulness was wasted.
I was responding to Cruss, Bill. Ease off the throttle a bit, huh?
OK, tomemos.
Meanwhile I’ve just ordered the DVD of Sita Sings the Blues. Between online clips I’ve seen and the background story I’m highly biased in favor of the film. I mean, what more could you want for a creation myth – independent artist creates original work against all odds and is slammed by Corporate America attempting to leach off the work of another artist who died years ago? The pitiful story has been all over the interwebs for the last several months, just go look.
I think that Pixars problem is that they make films for grownup targeting kids and seen by lifetime cartoon lovers. One should assume that after so many years they would hire some really fantastic storytellers.
But I must say that the idea of a traveling house is very good, and from an architectural point of view it is the best offer to the contemporary lifestyle seen in a long time.
Off cause one should wonder why Pixar with its position as a pioneer in the 3d field haven’t gone into a more intellectual approach storytelling, hereby wondering if there could be several levels in the story, like the claim is with Disney when he lived.
For some reason I relate to Pixar the same way I relate to toys from “Fisher Price” it’s made for small kids and the narrative of he toy is simple. Pixars narrative has this and at the same time it has a narrative which is related to “a grownup sitting in the office, who wants to break free; anxiety” and these two then creates this friction you call “implausible”. Hereby claiming that unfortunately Pixar is creating empty fantasy compared to a film like Mirromask written by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean whom I think understand outmost level of child’s mind like Disney did.
And I think the question is if you can expect Bob Peterson & Pete Docter to actually have a vision beyond the “Fisher Price/office anxiety” when they don’t have to pioneer beyond the actual 3d graphics.
I loved Up. I saw it with my 17 year old daughter. We both laughed and cried. We both were thrilled with the 3D and the wonderful story. Sharing a great movie with my kid is all this dad could ask for on fathers day.
I agree with Christopher comment about
“Of course its manipulation but I thought it set a nice tone.”