Up
The first twenty minutes or so of Up are easily the most emotional stuff Pixar has ever done. I'm not gonna say it got dusty in the theatre or anything. To this day there's still only one film that's ever made me tear up and that's Big Fish. The opening sequences feature a brief glimpse at a quiet but imaginative kid named Carl, who meets his soulmate in the wild haired, wide eyed Ellie. The two fall in love, get married, and grow old together always with the promise of adventure just around the corner. Ellie and Carl promise to move to Paradise Falls one day, but life keeps getting in the way. When Ellie passes away, Carl's life is in ruins, but he vows to keep his promise to her in the only way he knows how, which I guess isn't to charter a flight but to tie baloons to his house and float there. What Carl doesn't realize is that he's managed to pick up a stowaway in the form of a cub scout named Russell, a talkative, inquisitive, lonely kid a lot like Carl was in his youth.
I should learn never to doubt Pixar's ability to tell an entertaining, emotional story. I think if there is one thing that separates them from their chief rival, Dreamworks, it's that Pixar has the uncanny ability to make every one of their films emotionally resonant. Like I said, the stuff with Carl and Ellie will pull at your heart strings and make you feel the pain of this bitter old curmudgeon. It might cause you to rethink some of your own opinions about the elderly and why they seem so damn sour all the time. However I have to admit that the story beyond that failed to connect with me. The story goes off in a wildly different direction once they reach their destination. Carl and Russell befriend a rare bird, run into talking dogs, and encounter an enemy who threatens to ruin everything. It all felt very standard, and by comparison to the aforementioned stuff it pales by comparison. Still, it's hard to deny that Up is imaginative, bouncy, and fun most of the time. The 3-D does little to add to the movie, by the way, so don't sweat it if your theatre doesn't have it.
7/10
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
You can almost feel the writers bending themselves into an Auntie Anne pretezel to try and come up for a reason for this film to exist. Larry Daley(Ben Stiller) has moved on from his night security gig and is now head of his own company, manufacturing crappy devices and selling them on TV like the ShamWow™ dude or that Oxy-Clean bozo. It's made him rich, and he's been neglecting his little marble buddies at the museum, and they're getting lonely. And more than a little disgruntled. What's worse, they're being packed away for good, sent off to the Smithsonian to sit idle in the basement, never to wake up and cause mischief again. Awwwwwww!!! *frowny face* Oh, and now the little buggers are being threatened by another warlord with plans to rule not just the museum, but the WORLD!!!! Muhahahahah!!!
Who cares? I don't. Night at the Museum was a surprise, really. More fun than I expected, and loads more fun than it's boring sequel. Apparently the cure for a lackluster story is to just overload the thing with recognizable faces, and so we get the additions of the amazingly sexy Amy Adams as Amelia Earhardt. She is literally the only thing worth paying attention to, as she brings a wealth of energy to the role that nobody else can come close to matching. Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan appear to be sleepwalking, and don't even get me started on Robin Williams who is in this thing for about as long as Michael Spinks lasted against Mike Tyson. Hopefully this will be the last of the Museum flicks, but an Amelia Earhardt spinoff featuring Adams is an idea I can get behind.
4/10
Drag Me To Hell
I shouldn't have worried. Sam Raimi has only let me down one time,and even he would admit that Spider-Man 3 wasn't his best work. After more than two decades away, he has managed to breathe a bit of life back into the stagnant horror genre. What's more, he's done it while maintaining a hard PG-13 rating, a feat I thought all but impossible after years of deli thin horrors with few frights and even fewer laughs. Drag Me to Hell perfectly combines genuine thrills for over the top comedic violence, not unlike the Army of Darkness films that made Raimi a known commodity. Alison Lohaman was the perfect choice as Christine(it was supposed to be Ellen Page), an ambitious loan officer at a bank who makes the unfortunate mistake of denying an old lady an extension on her mortgage. She should've known better. Homegirl had all the earmarks of a crazy gypsy chick. She walked through the door lookin' like she had been cursed her whole life, and you wanna f*ck with her house? It was a bad call, Ripley. Christine is cursed, destined to be dragged to Hell within 3 days by a demon goat thing, who proceeds to make everything in her life go pear-shaped first. Christine's only chance to appease the demon, or pass the curse off to someone else.
Raimi knows how to push the audience's buttons, and that's exactly what you want out of a horror film. Most people could give two craps about a loan officer for a bank right now, but how the heck do you ignore the innocent, helpless looking Lohman? She's too cute to hate(Page could never pull that off)! Raimi seems to be thriving in the environment, simulataneously forcing you to jump from your seat while holding back the urge to gag. Truly he's having a ball getting the chance to flex these unused muscles again after so long. While there might be a little bit of message mixed in there about putting your wants ahead of the needs of others, that stuff is secondary to the next fright just around the corner. I'm hesitant to call this Raimi's best film, but it's definitely the most fun. I'm hoping he gets a chance to stretch out on stuff like this more often.
8/10
