By Rachel Fariss of Rach on Film.
I'm a sucker for award ceremonies. I get excited, I go through the nominees and judge whether or not they were the best choices, and I get upset when the wrong film wins. I'm also a big fan of animated films so when I found out that Up had been nominated for Best Picture as well as Best Animated Feature, I was pleased. I don’t think it will win, and I don’t really think it should (in this category anyway), but I’m glad it was given the honor of nomination anyway.But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, a quick synopsis. Up tells the story of 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen. He’s lost his true love, Ellie, and it looks like he might lose his strongest connection to her, their house. Before they can ship him off to a retirement village, Carl ties a heap of balloons to his house and flies it to Paradise Falls. Unfortunately he finds he’s picked up a stowaway, 8 year old Russell. Russell in turn picks up Kevin (a rare bird who is being hunted by Carl’s hero, Charles Muntz), and Dug (a dog with a collar that helps him speak). Hi-jinx ensue and Carl learns that the adventure of life is never really over.
The first ten minutes of this film are notorious. They seems to be able to reduce the toughest, most emotionally closed off, manly-man to a blubbering mess. A lot of people are saying that it’s this sequence that earned it a nomination in the first place, which is probably true. It’s not sappy or cheesy, it’s honest and heartbreaking and anyone over a certain age can connect it to a family member. I honestly believe that directors Pete Docter (also directed Monsters Inc) and Bob Peterson (also voices Dug and Alpha) are more deserving of a Best Director nomination than Cameron. There’s way more genuine pain in Carl than in any part of Avatar. Just sayin’.
From there the film returns to Pixar form. That’s not to say it turns into a children’s film, not at all, but it focuses on the cute and hilarious more than the poignant and sad. That’s not a bad
thing though. If there’s one thing Pixar can do, it’s comedy. Interestingly, it’s the same honesty that made the first 10 minutes so painful that make the rest of the film so hilarious. When the first words out of a dogs mouth were:“My name is Dug. I have just met you, and I love you.”I wanted to ask the usher to pause the movie while I regained control. I had a dog like that. He really could have used that collar.
Further more, Russell is the perfect mix of unbearably cute and excruciatingly irritating. It mixes brilliantly with Carl’s total negativity. It’s a simple concept, Russell is the “yes” character and Carl is the “no” character, and they need to join forces to defeat the bad guy. The filmmakers avoid making a cookie-cutter film by adding depth to the characters that is not reached by some live-action dramas.
The only other animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture was Beauty
and the Beast (1991). It lost to The Silence of the Lambs. Last year there was a little controversy over the fact that WALL-E wasn’t nominated for Best Picture despite receiving rave reviews. It’s nice to know that people are realizing the value of animated film enough to at least consider them for Best Picture, but we are not yet in the place where we can give them the Oscar. As I said earlier, Up doesn’t have much of a chance at winning this award, and the second half, whilst entertaining, is a little too kids-film to deserve it. At least, it shouldn’t win against the likes of The Hurt Locker or Inglourious Basterds (and others that don’t include Avatar – last dig, I promise). If anyone can make an animated film worthy of Best Picture though, it’s Pixar. Kudos, guys. Keep makin ‘em and I’ll keep watchin ‘em.
