Had a day with family yesterday and wound up watching
Up with my niece. I think, for me, it epitomizes why I dislike hearing too much hype before seeing a movie. Up was hailed as a masterpiece, the best Pixar movie, beautiful, funny, touching etc etc to the point where I could only be disappointed with it.
I suspect my expectations were knocked by the movie not being quite what I'd expected. I was expecting the story of an old man and a young boy floating off in a house propelled by balloons and meeting various people on their travels. Well, I got that, but not in quite the way I imagined as most of the time Up was tethered to one location.
I also suspect my expectations were skewed by the first 15 minutes, which were wonderful in every way - brilliant, beautiful and touching and also a demonstration on how economy of visuals and words can still tell a story - in this case a complete life story. You definitely do need to have the tissues out for that one. And it was so beautifully handled, anything that followed had to be a comedown.
Sadly, there were stretches after that where I felt a little bored and which seemed to fall flat. My major issue, however, was the introduction of a villain into a story that would have benefitted from being more about the terrific characters of curmudgeonly Carl and cute-as-a-button Russell than traditional swashbuckling heroics.
Pixar have yet to do a bad movie and Up certainly wasn't anywhere near, but I couldn't help be disappointed. Stretches of sheer brilliance, but not the strength of narrative that I felt
Ratatouille had. It just wasn't the "road movie with balloons" I was expecting and not quite as magical to me as reviews would have led me to believe.
Zombieland, on the other hand, which I watched yesterday as well, didn't disappoint. Perhaps because my expectations for the movie weren't impossibly high. Entertainingly ridiculous, it's a post-apocalyptic zom-com, which starts with a gross-out, slow-mo credit sequence which sets the scene for what's to come. Jesse Eisenberg is the wimpish, shut-in, "Michael Cera wasn't available" hero of the piece, with his obsessive rules for survival, teaming up with twinkie obsessed, scenery-chewing, snakeskin cowboy Woody Harrelson ("I'm in the ass-kicking business – and business is gooooood!")
After meeting up with con-artists sisters Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, the plot kicks in and it's a standard, but infectiously ridiculous road movie from there on in. There's something about the enthusiasm of the cast, especially the crazed Harrelson, which rubs off on you. The pacing's all over the place and the plot like Swiss cheese, the sheer randomness of it all, especially what should be considered one of the funniest cameos ever committed to film, keeps it fun. The performances and the one-liners that regularly pepper the script are the highlight, making the movie far sharper than the National Lampoon's Zombie Apocalypse tone I was half-expecting. There's even time for real character moments amid the over-the-top personalities and daftness.
It's a movie where the enthusiasm is as infectious as one of those zombie's nibbles.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
