UP

From the greatest animation studio Pixar, Finding Nemo's screenwriter Bob Peterson together with Monster Inc's director Pete Docter brought us one of the best movie this year - UP!

A simple enough and even childish plot of adventurous journey brings two seemingly different people together with unexpected chemistry, life lessons and ending.

Carl is a 78-year-old widower living lonely in his house that is the only house in the neighbourhood hindering the local urbanisation construction work. He is therefore forced to move or otherwise would be sent to the Elderly Home. With his whole harmonious life with his wife Ellie spent and many sweet memories shared in the house, stubborn as he may seem, there's no way he could give up the house so easily --- and he resorts to flying the house UP into the sky by attaching thousands of balloons to it, going onto an expedition searching for the dream destination "Paradise Falls" in South America, a trip that Carl and Ellie both so desperately wished for but never materialised before.

Russell is an 8-year-old Wilderness explorer scout, who gets neglected constantly by his divorced parents, by random chance he meets Carl due to his obsessive urge to help an elderly so as to collect the last one merit badge that he lacks - "Helping the Elderly" badge!

As a result, Russell is accidentally brought along for Carl's eventful trip on the flying house.





Alright, it follows the constant "buddy" formula of Pixar, and predictably it also has a villain and a talking dog in it too to inject suitable tension and comic relief. Cliche as it may sound, UP is exceptional in its poignant and touching delivery, subtle symbolism and life lessons underneath the superficial plot and entertainment.

While the youngsters would be happy to see the funny dogs and various visual gags, grown-ups will surely be enchanted by the 4-minute non-verbal montage showing Carl and Ellie's married life together till death set them apart. It's full of ups-and-downs, with sweetness, romance, unpredictable events, and overwhelming sentiment. Backed by superb music of Michael Giacchino's original composition, it gives the audience such an emotional roller-coaster ride and also a decent back story for Carl's character. We could understand fully his deliberate isolation and grumpy personality there after.





Another important thing revealed in this marvelous montage is that the couple cannot have their own baby. As a result, they turned their dream, energy and money into planning a trip to visit the Paradise Falls, which however was made impossible due to a series of unfortunate life events and later Ellie's ill health. So, unlikely as Russell may seem, he is in fact a perfect companion to old Carl for the adventure. Subconsciously, through the journey, Carl becomes the father figure to the boy, and as a result Russell in a way compensate for the child Carl has never had.

Though Russell maybe a bit energetic, noisy, and even mischievous at times, he reminds Carl of the young Ellie, and he makes him chuckle and lights up his life once again. In fact, on closer look, Carl and Russell do share many similarities : They are both stubborn, determined, adventurous and obsessive but in the wrong way. While Russell is obsessed with collecting all the scout's merit badges so to draw his parents' attention and love, Carl is obsessed with the objects and memories in the house which reminds him of a great life he once had with his wife, and so he is determined to fulfill Ellie's unfinished dream by taking the house to the destination. Miserably enough, they both know deeply that even their respective goals are attained, nothing would actually be changed.

Speaking of which, there comes the major lesson in the movie - To let go. The flying house itself is symbolic enough in the middle of the movie, with the "precious" objects in the house thrown out by Carl in order to let the house soar again. As Ellie wrote in her adventure book, it's really time for Carl to have his own adventure after the one they shared together before.

Another thing that touches me dearly is about the "Little moments" in our lives. Like the little things that Carl and Ellie did together and being captured as photo in the adventure book. Nothing like that real expedition that they had planned, however is not less memorable or adventurous. Similarly, the little scout told Carl about how he missed the time he spent with his father by just sitting together on the curb eating ice-cream and guessing the colour of cars passing in front. Nothing fancy or extravagant at all.

I hope we all can cherish every little moments that we have in life, instead of chasing and getting lost in the "big dreams" that we so much desire and obsessed with..........and strange enough in life, sometimes those big dreams are accomplished in their own mysterious way which is out of our control, just like the last shot in the movie - with the house being blown off and finally seated exactly beside the Paradise Falls!

WALL-E

Pixar's latest animated feature WALL-E seems like a rebound from the disappointing Ratatouille last year. Though it's not the best Pixar production to me, it's one of the best in recent years for their Studio.

The director this time is Andrew Stanton, the one who last time brought us Finding Nemo, the best among Pixar's to me. So the hope is high naturally. Instead of the adventure under sea, this time it is about an adventure through the outer space!

The graphics were amazing and extraordinary, everything looks so real; within minutes into the film, I forgot that I was watching a cartoon, and I was immediately drawn into it. But as usual, it's not only the look and technique but the contents of the films that give Pixar such an outstanding and respectable status in Hollywood.

Apart from being the first futuristic space adventure movie for Pixar, it's also their first genuine love story. And it examines the relationship between the two sex nowadays! As we all know, nowadays women are in general smarter and are even more capable than men; they took up important positions in our society with higher directives, regardless of their somehow explosive mood-swings and occasionally quite destructive tantrums not unlike EVE's......Because of this, like EVE, women are too caught up in their directives, and end up having no time for any romance in their life. Therefore the striking figure of unmarried women in this era.

The love-at-first-sight of a shy WALL-E and his later persistent pursuit of EVE is quite charming and touching. And to make the audience feeling romantic about the relationship between two robots is quite a difficult feat. But I guess they succeed in this movie!

Apart from the obvious romance and "Green" message that the movie had, a few more subtle things worth noticing as well. For example, people intoxicated by the advanced technology like virtual video games and internets, making them so self-absorbed and isolated to the extent that they cannot enjoy life and appreciate the real world around them!

Also, not to mention the gags about people's immobility with junk-food diet and the resulted morbid obesity! I was alarmed by the left-alone Babies being "spoon-fed" by the nonsense from the TVs in one scene......I wish in our future, people won't be as depicted in the movie - thinking/dressing/acting similarly as they are told, under the big influence of the Global Economic Monopolisation!

My only complaint about this movie is that it seems somehow too long for the very limited material there, and it also lacks a bit of originality, so much so it follows a specific formula that made it highly predictable in the second half.

But anyway, what I love most about this movie is the consistent nostalgic feel:
The Hello Dolly clips, the dances, the oldies like Louis Armstrong's La vie en rose, the "junk" collections of WALL-E; not to mention the great painting styles of our past masters like Van Gogh, Seurat and Monet during the end credits...

In our era of great advances in technology, people continuously moves forward, welcoming the new stuffs and leaving lots of the out-dated things behind as junks...adapting a more soul-less lifestyles while leaving our hearts behind...

A little bit of nostalgia here should serve us well, I guess...at least to remind us of some of the good old things in the past...

RATATOUILLE

Finally, I saw the Pixar's highly-anticipated latest feature animation : Ratatouille!

And it's interesting enough that the movie itself is indeed a Ratatouille......The similarity between the two is strikingly uncanny.

Pourquoi???

The word "Ratatouille" means simply an ordinary cuisine with assorted vegetables mixing together, nothing high-class or fancy. Like its name, the movie itself is a simple enough story with various different cinematic elements (romance, drama, action, suspense and comedy) added and mixed together. Voila!

However, the quality of the cuisine depends on the creativity and the craft of the Chef (or Remy the Mouse in this case) while the success of the movie rests on the shoulder of the director Brad Bird, who brought us the incredible "The Incredibles" 2 years ago.

Brad Bird's sense of humour and creativity is beyond question, as evident from The Simpsons TV series in which he acted as the Executive Consultant for years. This time, in Ratatouille, he wrote a very simple plot involving a mouse trying to use his cooking talent to be a top chef. Like making cuisine, Brad Bird did make this movie whole-heartedly, with extremely delicate execution and obsessive attention to details. As a result, in the movie, we marvel at the absolutely gorgeous graphics, and are stunned by the breathtakingly realistic Paris streets and landscapes. Besides, all the gags and punch lines are great and with appropriate effects, leaving the audience immensly entertained.

Furthermore, in the movie, he smartly used the icon of Disney as the lead character of this movie to carry on the great tradition of the deceased Walt Disney, who inspired lots of the talented young animation artists like what Gusteau did to Remy. This is an openly respectable tribute to the late Walt Disney from Brad Bird, and at the same time, with some bold criticism directed to the present Disney Empire who now is concentrating on mainly cashing out through exhaustive merchandising.

For me, after seeing the movie, I have very mixed feelings about it. While I found it a great feast to the eyes and most of the time laughed my ass off, I feel that it didn't live up to my expectation. It is better than Cars, which in my opinion, is the worst production by Pixar so far. However, it cannot exceed the success of Finding Nemo or The Incredibles.

Pourqoui???


Just like the cuisine Ratatouille, without the garnishing, the spices and the gravy, it's just some cheap and ordinary vegetables putting together. The movie distracts us from the slim cliche plot and a few superficial characters with the grandeur visuals, hilarious dialogues, exciting chasing scenes, etc. And I also think that it suffers majorly from the excessive length of screening time, together with inconsistent pace, making some scenes dragging to nearly stagnant, notably the first hour.

Also, most of the characters were under-developed. Besides Remy and Linguini, the others are uni-faceted and not at all memorable, serving as kind of like show-and-go sort of a comic relief. The creation of the imaginary friend Gusteau is somehow childish and even cliche. Colette's romance with Linguini is somehow predictable yet not convincing enough. The evils (Skinner and Anton) are not too intimidating or persuasive and so pose not much challenge at all to the leads, making the final act of resolution a bit simple and unsatisfying.......

And what's less than satisfying is the explicit morals and messages of the movie. They almost tell us the lesson of the day word by word, thus insulting the audience. The final long speech by the food critic is particularly unbearable. Though putting this in at the end is a smart move, because it will shut the mouths of all the movie critics from bad-mouthing it, like the case of the Emperor's new clothes!

Well, since I'm not a critic, I'm immuned from that. "Surprise me" no more, I have to say that for a Pixar movie, Ratatouille overall gets only a passing mark. However, among the animated movies this year so far (I haven't seen the Simpsons Movie yet), I still recommend it to anyone who loves animation and is young at heart.