Movie Reviews: Burma VJ, Up, What Goes Up

GO  UP The 10th feature-length film from the Pixar studios suggests what Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino might have looked like if, instead of standing his ground, Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski had simply attached a few thousand helium balloons to his ramshackle craftsman and lifted off into the atmosphere. That’s precisely the course of action taken by Up’s own cantankerous septuagenarian widower, Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner, channeling Walter Matthau), after a physical altercation with a man half his age threatens to land him in a retirement home for the rest of his days. Carl even comes complete with his own Asian-American protégé in the form of pudgy, diminutive Russell, an 8-year-old Junior Wilderness Explorer who ends up accompanying him on his intercontinental journey to the jungles of South America. There, Carl plans to deposit his flying house at the edge of the waterfall he had always intended to visit with his late wife, Ellie — an act of noblesse oblige that recalls the cross-country tractor journey undertaken by the title character of David Lynch’s The Straight Story. Up, which was directed by Monsters, Inc.’s Pete Docter, doesn’t put forth an entire worldview like the films of Ratatouille director Brad Bird, or employ the sort of formal invention of last year’s WALL-E, but it is hardly without its own novelties and pleasures. For starters, it’s one of the only animated films in which the main characters are all ordinary human beings who inhabit a recognizable real world devoid of superheroes, fairy-tale princesses and giant green ogres. It’s also unexpectedly ambitious in its use of period, with an opening act that stretches from the 1930s to the present, neatly encapsulating the triumphs and tragedies of Carl and Ellie’s marriage (including what I’m quite certain is the first Pixar miscarriage) in one dazzling montage sequence. Even the movie’s somewhat more programmatic second half, in which Carl and Russell square off against an eccentric explorer (Christopher Plummer) hell-bent on capturing an exotic species of local fauna, proves to be a far more rousing Indiana Jones–style caper than last season’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And there is one flash of authentic comic genius: a pack of hunting dogs equipped with high-tech collars that translate their thoughts into human voices. Finally, Up emerges as a gentle hymn to adventure of both the soaring, storybook variety and the smaller, less obvious kind — the perilous, unpredictable and richly rewarding journey of ordinary, everyday life. (Citywide) (Scott Foundas)

WHAT GOES UP Shed a tear, if you will, for Hilary Duff. Having finished her stint as Lizzie McGuire five years ago, she’s too old for the Disney Channel factory and can’t compete with shinier, newer models like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. But this is rock bottom: I’ve seen a lot of terrible movies in the line of duty, but What Goes Up might be the only genuinely unreleasable one. Co-writer/director Jonathan Glatzer makes dark allusions in the press kit to losing much of his budget and shooting time just a few weeks before starting. I feel for him. But the result is that a movie starring Hilary Duff is nearly as cubist as, say, Alain Resnais’ Muriel — and almost as hard to follow. I think this was supposed to be a standard-issue Sundance comedy, but I have no idea what’s going on. Suffice it to say that Steve Coogan is a cynical reporter who comes to a small town and starts lusting after teen girls and tries to get into Duff’s pants in a parody of the Romeo & Juliet balcony scene, and is redeemed. Or something. (Sunset 5; Playhouse 7; Town Center 5) (Vadim Rizov)