Bring Back Brad Bird

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2009)

The Walt Disney company released a series of somewhat "groundbreaking" animated films between 1937 and 1942 ("Snow White", "Pinocchio", "Bambi", "Dumbo" etc). Thereafter it degenerated into a purveyor of a formulaic, predictable and increasingly saccharine features. Over the decades it became nothing less than a cultural force, plucking stories from countries all over the world and then skewing them until they fit the "Disney formula". Eventually Disney seemed to have stopped making animated films altogether. Each new release was simply an addition to some already existent, homogeneous, "Disney Land". This is a land of fairy tales, princes and princesses, wicked stepmothers, dead parents, song and dance numbers, bumbling sidekicks, lots of anthropomorphic charm, the ubiquitous fear of separation and punishment, and some pretty despicable values relating to gender, monarchs and class. Eventually it got to the point where it didn't matter what Disney's films were about. All that mattered were that they conformed to the rules of "Disney Land". The stories, the characters, the customer expectations, the brand awareness, all coalesced to form a kind of bland corporate mission statement.
Gradually the company began to shamelessly use its commitment to "wholesome" entertainment to market an endless array of toys, gadgets and clothes to children. It all seemed quite innocuous, but beneath Disney's self-proclaimed role as an icon of culture, lies a powerful educational apparatus that provides ideologically loaded fantasies for children and adults alike. Fantasy, for Disney, has no basis in reality, no sense of real conflicts, struggles, motivations or social relations. Instead, "fantasy" becomes a marketing device, a form of hype rooted solely in the logic of self-interest and buying.
In the early 1990s, Disney received praise for films like "The Lion King" and "Beauty and The Beast". The studio had re-found its form, some said. By the time Pixar Studios had established itself as a brand in the late 90s, however, Disney had once again lost its cool factor. Burnt by poor box-office returns, the company started making sequels to its more popular animations and began releasing them solely on DVD or TV. Much later they'd begin gobbling up outside mega-franchises (Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars etc).
Pixar's evolution very much mirrors Disney's. After a string of somewhat revolutionary films, and Brad Bird's two fairly personal features, Pixar has begun a slow spiral into mediocrity, "Cars", "WALL-E" and "Up" representing the company on a downward slope.
"Up" is about an elderly man and young boy who travel to South America and have a series of adventures. It's a consistently funny film, but virtually every character here is contrived and understood entirely in one dimensional terms. An old man lost his wife, a wife lost her child, a young boy lost his father, a talking dog is bullied by other dogs, a giant bird is separated from its offspring...every single character seems cynically designed or calibrated to quickly illicit unearned sentiment.
Pixar's last film, "WALL-E", was no different, death (there are about 4 death scenes in that film), loneliness and loss rolled out like Pavlovian commands. See, "WALL-E" is dead, why not shed a tear? See, the old man lost his wife, why not weep? Of course Pixar's films have always been sentimental, but they were sentimental in subtler or original ways. Think the smile which ends "Monster's Inc", the food critic's flashback at the end of "Rattatoille" or the brief shot of unhatched eggs in "Finding Nemo".
Ignoring Pixar's emotional regression, its plots have also become increasingly generic. "Up" in particular feels like a cocktail of bits and pieces plucked from "Ice Age 3", "The House of Small Cubes", "The Red Balloon", "Fitzcarraldo", "King Kong" etc. For a film which features an airship called "The Spirit of Adventure", the film is strangely cowardly, content to trade in stock characters and lazy chase scenes. Elsewhere the film champions adventure with one hand whilst exalting the return to Norman Rockwellesque normalcy; everyday life, we learn, is adventure enough. And those who go off on mighty exhibitions go insane anyway. This is very much the Pixar formula. Pixar's characters live in a small world, discover a bigger world outside of their familiar surroundings, and then retreat quickly back to the box.
Beyond all this, "Up" is Pixar's attempt to outright mimic Hayao Miyazaki (the director of "Up" directed the English voice dubs of Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle", another film with old people in a moving house). Pixar/Disney chief John Lasseter has often cited Miyazaki as a key influence on Pixar, but Miyazaki's films have a subtlety and sense of auteurism that these latest Pixar offerings lack. Observe, for example, the gorgeous flying scenes in "Kiki's Delivery Service", "Nausica", "Castle In the Sky" and "Porcco Rosso". In comparison, the "flying" scenes in "Up" are strangely inert. While previous Pixar films have exploited space to great effect, "Up" is awash with flat compositions and ordinary camera work.
Still, the film has some good moments, most of them occurring in "Up's" first half. Here we're treated to several clever visuals, jokes and powerful montages, some of which seem cribbed from Kunio Kato's "The House of Small Cubes" and Michael Apted's "Up", the latter a noteworthy documentary series which chronicles the lives of several human beings, from cradle to grave. It's all very sad.
7.9/10 - Worth one viewing. See "From Up on Poppy Hill", "The Girl who Leapt through Time" and "The King of Pigs".