Current location:	Carl's Flying House
Current mood:	amused
Current music:	Blow Up Your Video (CD) / AC-DC
Entry tags:	movie_review, shitty_disney_movies, up

Another Wonderful Disney Movie

 

The latest craptastic celluloid shitfest from Disney and Pixar is entitled UP! Here's the official website: Clicky (if you insist). If you see the website, you've seen enough. The asshole designers of that site sure could have taken a whole bunch of lessons from these folks: Web Pages That Suck. Enough with the goddamn flash!

One gets the idea that the whole point of this hideous movie is that it's in 3-D, viewed through these special glasses. Yeah, now there's a real blast from the past, as this was a BIG THING waaaaaaaaaaaay back in the 1950s. What's next: poodle skirts for the girls, duck tails for the guys, "Davy Crocket" faux coonskin caps on all the boys, Hula Hoops? Welcome to 2009.

The story begins back in the 1930s, as we are introduced to the young Carl Frederickson, who is obsessed with the exploits of an explorer named "Muntz". (This character seems to have been roughly based on Martin Johnson, a RL explorer who worked at that time.) As Carl is leaving the theatre after viewing a "short" about Muntz, and the latest disturbing news of his having faked the fossils he's been selling to museums, he's walking past an abandoned old house when he notices that the weather vane seems to have a mind of its own. So he enters the old house, and discovers this girl, Ellie, who has afrotech modded a contraption from rope and a coffee grinder to play "airship" like the fancy airship Muntz flew. They discover their mutual interest in this Muntz character, and Carl gets inducted into the Ellie Adventure Club as the first member, complete with a "badge" made from the cap of a bottle of grape soda and a safety pin. Then some shit happens, and Ellie shows Carl her "My Adventure Book" -- a photo album filled with news clippings about Muntz. It also includes a blank section under the heading of: "Stuff I Am Going to Do".

Ellie and Carl grow up, get married, yada, yada, yada. Their dreams of having kids and adventures in South America come to naught. Ellie croaks, more shit happens, and now Carl is an embittered, 78 y/o man with a thoroughly repugnant personality who's hopelessly stuck in the past. <sarcasm>Now here is a plot that's absolutely shocking in its sheer originality. I swear I never saw anything like this before.</sarcasm>

More shit happens, Carl attaches thousands of balloons to his house and flies the whole thing off to South America one step ahead of the guys who're going to take him to a nursing home after he's declared incompetent. Never mind that the jet stream doesn't blow in a southerly direction. If he already had all those balloons and all that helium, why didn't he think of this way before now? After lift-off, he finds that this annoying kid, Russell, has accidentally come along for the ride. They arrive in South America near his destination, "Paradise Falls", where he intended to plant the house. Now we see this 78 y/o man who couldn't even walk up and down his own stairs, hauling the floating house across the plains. They are obviously on top of an "autana" -- remnants of ancient limestone highlands. Yes, they really do exist in SA. Then, they descent all the way down into the rain forest for no apparent reason. Yeah, that makes a whole helluvalot of sense. If they really did that, they'd have a helluvalot more to worry about than Muntz. Those SA rain forests are lousy with FARC militants, Shining Path terrorists, and narco warlords of all sorts.

More shit happens, there's a big bird named "Kevin" and a talking dog named "Dug" involved, they find the long-lost Muntz, who turns out to be a bad guy. More original plot material here.

Finally, the old coot, having totally alienated Russell and Dug, settles down in peace without being bothered by the annoying Russell and Dug, to peruse Ellie's old "My Adventure Book", and turns to the "Stuff I Am Going to Do" section to find that she has filled it with pics of their life together. On the last page he reads: "Thanks for the adventure. Now go out there and have a new adventure" (or something like that). So Carl finally realizes, after all these wasted years, that he wasn't the failure he thought he was. Why didn't he look at the goddamn book before now? That would have prevented all the bullshit wouldn't it?

So he empties the flying house of all the crap he's been hoarding and guarding all these years to lighten the load so's the house will fly for one last time. Carl finally realizes that Russell, Dug and Kevin really need him, and that new friends are better than old memories. WOWSERS! Another original idea! More shit happens, the EEEEEEEEEEVIL Muntz is killed, Carl & Co. fly Muntz' airship back to the US of A, Russell gets his new merit badge as a "Wilderness Explorer", Carl becomes his surrogate dad, happy fucking ending.

136 minutes, millions of dollars, and not one original idea in the whole fucking mess. How do they do it?

Official x_eleven rating: