飞屋环游记观后感英文

飞屋环游记观后感英文

飞屋环游记观后感英文

Up is the latest film from Pixar, and this time the main

character is not a robot or rat or monster, but rather a little old man

who looks like Spencer Tracy and occasionally growls like Clint Eastwood

in Gran Torino. After his wife dies, Carl Fredericksen (Ed Asner) faces

a lonely life ahead, possibly in a retirement community. He decides to

have the adventure that he and his wife always dreamed of, and sets out

for the quasi-legendary Paradise Falls in South America. His method of

travel? The family home, lifted by an amazing canopy of balloons.

However, he isn't alone ... he's inadvertently picked up an enthusiastic

8-year-old Wilderness Explorer, Russell (Jordan Nagai), who only wants

to help.

As the movie progresses, Carl's house stops being a means for

escape and adventure, and turns into a burden that the two explorers

have to drag around with them. And the movie shifts from a sweet and

slightly fantastic story about how an older man copes with loneliness

and regret, into a comic action-adventure tale with a setting and

characters that would be right at home in Warner Bros. cartoons,

especially the "Road Runner" series. Only instead of Wile E. Coyote,

Carl and Russell find the explorer who inspired Carl when he was

Russell's age, Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer).

Up moves smoothly from romance to drama to fantasy to comedy to

action-adventure and then back to sentimental drama again, without

jolting your emotions around too much. The sentimental parts are sweet

but not cloying or overdone. On the other hand, the Carl-Russell

relationship seemed a little too familiar to me, something we've

encountered for decades, from "Dennis the Menace" to Bad Santa, without

offering much that is new. I also would have liked Muntz to be a little

less two-dimensional, so to speak. However, as a friend pointed out,

Carl and Muntz have a wonderful dynamic that may remind you of not only

Spencer Tracy but Kirk Douglas, together at last.

Co-director Pete Docter also directed Monsters, Inc., another

Pixar comedy with some sweet moments and even a few that have you

complaining about the allergies and the way that screen glare can make

your eyes water. Bob Peterson, who contributed to scripts for Finding Nemo and other Pixar movies, co-directed and wrote the screenplay and

voices one of the dogs. Pixar fans will appreciate the little touches

typical of the studio's films -- of course John Ratzenberger has a role,

this time as a construction worker, and there are a number of quick

visual jokes that are impossible to catch in a single viewing.

It goes without saying, as it has for even the weaker Pixar

entries, that the movie looks gorgeous. I saw Up in 3-D, found the 3-D

effects to be very subtle ... so subtle that at times I wondered if

parts of the film had been rendered into 3-D at all. The 3-D

occasionally adds some depth of field that enhances the overall look of

the movie, but for the most part you could do without it and not miss

anything. I'm a little sorry that the one theater in town with 4K

digital is only showing the movie in 3-D because I would love to see how

a high-quality traditional screening fares in comparison.

Up is good enough to be included in arguments about which Pixar

film is best, although I would still fight for Ratatouille, myself. Is

Up a children's film with side jokes for adults, a family film, or a

film that's made for grownups but has many elements that children also

can enjoy? At times it seems to fit in any of these categories as well

as others -- it would be a great date film -- but ultimately it boils

down to being a very good movie that defies demographic categorization.

In other words, if you're old enough to sit quietly through a feature

film, go see it. (And bring tissues.)