Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Movie review - Up

Up is a great movie, with great animation and story, plus, it's very funny. What else would you expect from Pixar? They keep their perfect record here with one of their best movie to date. It is rating PG in many countries, probably because it deals with losing a loved one near the beginning and some dogs that are, well, bad dogs... Grrrr! Nothing really frightening, but very young kids may be in search of comfort on a few occasions.

Most of the movie is quite funny for the whole family. The theatre I was in, at Montreal's AMC, was packed and there was a lot of kids. But they didn't bother me during the movie, as I rarely heard them. That's a good indication that they must have been captivated by the movie. Of course, since there is a 3D version of this movie, that's the one I saw. It's well done and not too much "in your face", as some other movies are. It gives it depth, rather then throw stuff at you. I think as movies matures in their use of 3D, this will become the norm. If you can't see it in 3D, or don't want to, I'm sure it will be as enjoyable in 2D.

The story is that of Carl, a boy who dreams of adventures and who meets a girl, Ellie, with the same dreams who becomes friend with him and who he later get married to. They always want to get to live a big adventure, but life doesn't always let you do these thing, when you become responsible adults. As they grow old, the adventure seems less likely to happen. When his wife dies, Carl is alone and old. One day, something happens and he gets to live his adventure, for himself and in memory of Ellie. The way it happens is absolutely unreal, but this being an animated movie, we can forgive that little detail. As it can be seen in the trailer, Carl attaches a lot of helium-filled balloons to his house, which then simply floats away.

So get the whole family and go see Up, in 2 or 3D. Everyone will find something fun in it.

All the previews before the movie are in 3D (I assume they show the 2D versions with the 2D version of Up...) and shows that this is more then just a trend. As movies gets competition from big screens TV and surround-sound systems at home, movie studios must find a way to keep people going to movie theatres. 3D is one way to do this. Expects more movies to be in 3D in the near future. One of the preview was a teaser for Toy Story 3, opening Summer 2010.

Finally, as it is the tradition with Pixar movies, we get a short film before the main feature. Also in 3D, Partly Cloudy is a fun animation which answer the question "where do storks get the babies they deliver from anyway?". Very funny as well.

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