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.

Movie review: WALL-E

So far, I have not been disappointed by any Pixar movie, so I was not worried when I decided to go see WALL-E. The different trailers and teases I had seen seemed to support this view as well. I can now affirm that this is one of their best movie ever! Animation, Sci-Fi, comedy, social criticism, positive message, it has it all. It deals with the fact that we are transforming our planet in a giant garbage can and what leads to it.

As we can see in the trailer, WALL-E, which stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class, is a mobile trash compactor. He goes around picking up all the garbage and piles it up in giant mountains, some of them taller then the tallest sky scrapers around. He is the last working unit and has been at it for about 700 years and still has a lot of work to do. All humans have evacuated Earth to live on a mostly automated ship, full of robot servants, the Axiom. The two elements that are mainly criticized are over-consumption and laziness. The first made our planet inhabitable and the second made everyone fat. But it's still a very funny movie, with hope in the end.

We are treated to high quality animation, as usual, with a bit of live-action sequences in the form of prerecorded messages by the BnL CEO, played by Fred Willard. It's a very funny comedy for the whole family and you really should go see it if you haven't done so already. I'll probably go see it a second time myself...

Movie review: Ratatouille

Can Pixar produce a bad movie? It doesn't look like it! They certainly have another success with this one. As expected, the animation is really good, the story is funny and the whole movie very enjoyable.

This one takes us to Paris, famous for it's good food and rude manners. Our hero, Remy, is a rat with great cooking abilities but have a big handicap to be a chef. He's a rat. Rats and restaurant kitchens do not mix well. In comes Linguini, a boy with no particular talents and gets hired as the garbage boy. Long story short, Remy and Linguini gets together to become an excellent chef. See the trailer for a visual explanation!

I really liked Ratatouille. It's really funny, looks great and even has a few surprises. If you like other Pixar movies, you will love this one. There is also a short animation presented before the movie, about alien abductions, which is very funny as well.