Film Review: Up

Aka, Pixar scores again. I saw this film with a friend's young son, and with several decades of age between us, we both enjoyed it immensely. I probably got more out of the opening sequence than he did - which is a stunning mini-movie in itself, telling the story of Carl and Ellie from first meeting as children to Ellie's death in old age, leaving Carl, one of our two main characters, behind - but he was so riveted in the end that he insisted on staying through all the end credits. (And told me that "Michael Gambon who plays Dumbledore wrote the music!" Alas, I had to say, "No, that was Michael Giacchino.")

Up is an odd couple movie in more ways than one. Cranky Carl in his old age and eager boyscout Russell make one, of course. So do shy young Carl and brash adventureous Ellie at the beginning. So does the central conceit of the film, the old house Carl lives in which he can make fly for a short while with all the colourful balloons he has left; the charm of the image - old house, dozens of balloons - never lessens through the story. Rarely have I seen a movie aimed at children which while never neglecting the fun adventure part manages to pack such a sense of personal history into the characters. It's not just that Carl is old in years; it's that we've got a true sense of his life before the main action of the film, and not only because of the opening sequence but because his relationship with his dead wife continues to be so important to him, and of course because of what and whom he and Russell find in South America. It's a movie that deals with aging, grief, being a child of divorced parents and friendship in a way that flows with the story and never feels inserted as a lecture. The spin on that tried and true Disney stallwart, talking animals, is inventive and hilarious, and if you like 20s and 30s adventure serials, a central element of the story is both a homage and a critique.

One of many reasons why many years ago when I saw the film version of The Neverending Story I was disappointed was that Bastian, who in the novel is a fat little boy bullied for his body weight as much as for anything else (which is a rather important plot point in terms of what happens later), was played by your avarage good looking and thin boy. Well, Up not only has an old man as one of its two main characters, but a genuinenly heavy boy as its other main character (and Russell doesn't find happiness via weight loss in the story, either) - not as a sidekick, as a main character. It's yet another way this film manages to be endearing and refreshing.

The soundtrack my young companion admired was great, too. When trying to explain the not-Gambon-ness of Michael Giacchino, I could unfortunately only list shows he wasn't familiar with, such as Lost. (Which reminds me: I hear Michael Emerson finally won an Emmy for his performance as Benjamin Linus. Hooray! Also, overdue. Also, I actually think nominating him for "supporting" is sort of mislabelling, because these last two seasons Ben was as much a central character as anyone else, and in s5 especially had both more to do than Jack and was more important to the storyarc.) He had just one criticism of Up: ( which is too spoilery to mention above cut. )

In conclusion: Up was fabulous. Go watch! Also, when does the last season of Lost start?

All you need isn't love, basically: meta on whether or not UST is essential for succesful tv shows

Recently I've seen a couple of posts debating again whether or not the old adage that resolving sexual tension between a couple spells doom for a tv show. As I'm not familiar with the fandoms they cite - not named so I don't accidentally spoil fans of said shows - I felt inspired to some ponderings of my own.

Now, personally I might only rarely ship characters at all, but of course I'm aware that UST and "will they, won't they" stories are a big selling point for many a tv show for much of the audience. Still, I think the reason why some shows declined in quality wasn't really that their leading couple "got together"; on the contrary, my heretical theory is that the decline in most cases probably goes along with a scripts development that focuses on the romance of the couple too much. Take Farscape. ( Spoilers for all four seasons follow. )

Or let's take the X-Files for a counter example. Here I don't think the problem was that Chris Carter drew out the UST so long that the people stopped caring whether or not Mulder and Scully ever got together but that he couldn't plot long term conspiracy arcs to save his life and that Scully lost more and more of her life not revolving around Mulder. Moreover, if a couple, whether platonic or romantic in nature, becomes a show's selling point, we should see they these people are good for each other. I stopped watching around s5 and even then I couldn't see why Mulder was in any way good for Scully; they had in fact become both far more interesting in scenes with other people.

Now for the shows that brought couples together (and split them apart, that, too, reunited them, and everything in between) without simultanously losing quality (as always imo): Six Feet Under, for example. It's an ensemble show, but if you had to choose whom to label "leading couple", there probably would be an even split between Nate/Brenda and David/Keith; I didn't sit there with a stop watch timing screentime, but to my recollection the show treated them about evenly in terms of how important those relationships were. Brenda and Nate have sex in the pilot of the show, David and Keith are already a couple in said pilot, which echews the conventional UST/will-they-won't-they pattern entirely. Now, there were times during the five seasons of the show where I was annoyed by each of these four characters, though usually not simultanously. But I never had a problem with the place their romances had either in the overall narrative or in their personal storylines. Not coincidentally, at no point did Six Feet Under become either the Nate and Brenda or the David and Keith show.

The West Wing is a hybrid here in that one of the most popular couples, Josh and Donna, ( had a spoilery for s7 development )

The other canonical couples, though, either added sex to their relationship early on - i.e. CJ/Danny or Charlie/Zoey - or were already an established item years before the show started (i.e. Jed/Abby). (Fanon couples are incidental to the point I'm trying to make here.) Again, none of the romantic relationships ever overcrowded everything else; the various friendships (to which of course Josh/Donna also belonged) got far more room, and of course the show never forgot its central premise, that these people worked for the goverment because they genuinenly believed in the romance of public service. West Wing character X/saving the country always topped everything else. As a result, the show surely had its ups and downs, and its problems, too, but I never had the impression these were about romances (or lack of same).

In conclusion: to me, the recipe for a successful tv romance isn't how long or short the UST period between a couple is but whether or not the show in question gives the couple in question other things and relationships, or whether it expects the audience to care only about the central romance. If it does, it's bound to crash. For this viewer, at least.