News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

USA: David Hand, 1937

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is, of course, Disney's first and the first North American animated feature (although not, as it happens, the first animated feature, despite more than seventy years of misinformation) - "the one that started it all", as the saying goes. It's incredibly highly regarded, even by those who generally look down their noses at animation, and yet I can't help feeling that its merit is largely statistical. Yes, it's a significant film, but it's far from Disney's best. The 1930s and 40s were a period of extremely rapid development for the medium of animation (no other art form in history grew so much in such a short space of time), and you only have to look at their next film, Pinocchio, to see how much they improved in every respect - from animation to characterisation to the fundamentals of good storytelling - in the space of three years. Snow White has some extremely impressive moments - Snow White's horror-filled dash through the forest and the Queen's transformation being particular highlights - but for the most part it drags, with the characters either bland (Snow White) or obvious (the dwarfs, each of whom has a single personality trait summed up by their name), and the animators spending way too long indulging in sight gags that really aren't all that funny. I wouldn't expect the studio's first attempt at a full length feature to be a masterpiece, so I'm content to appreciate it for what it is: a vital stepping stone on the path to greatness.

IMDB reference

USA: Brad Bird, 2004

IMDB reference

USA: Pete Docter, 2009

...or "Why I Can't Stand Children"

History repeats itself. A few posts back, I told you about my foolish decision to go and see Pixar's Finding Nemo during the school October week holidays of 2003. Well, today, I went to see the latest Pixar movie, Up, only released in the UK last Friday (yeah, I know). Guess what week this is? That's right: the school October week.

Yeah, I'm guessing you can imagine how that turned out.

Noxious, screaming brats as far as the eye could see, including one infant who started bawling the moment Carl Fredericksen's wife died during the opening five minutes and didn't let up until carried bodily from the auditorium by one of its parents. At least that parent actually did something proactive, though, which is more than can be said for the rest, who seemed content to let their spawn run riot... when they weren't trotting back and forth to the lobby to fetch armloads of feed for their mewling young. The dominating line of thinking seemed to be that, with a so-called "kids' movie", basic rules of etiquette did not apply and it was perfectly reasonable to disrupt the screening for the rest of the audience. That, or the parents in question genuinely can't control their offspring... which, when you consider that they are responsible for actually bringing them into the world in the first place, is a pretty sorry state of affairs.

This image more or less sums up what I had to contend with.

That's not to say that all of the children in the audience behaved like this. Indeed, I suspect that a fair number of them were thoroughly innocuous. However, the actions of a minority meant that my strongest memory of the screening is not so much the film itself but rather the extent to which it was disrupted. It's too bad, because it really is a very good film indeed. I went to a traditional 2D screening because I knew it would be my only change to see it on film (the 3D screenings, and the forthcoming DVD and BD releases, are digital), and because I mistakenly believed that parents would shun the 2D version in favour of the spectacle of stereoscopic razzmatazz. More fool me, eh?

Anyway, the basic storyline has already been recounted more than adequately elsewhere, so I won't bother sounding like a broken record. (Yeah, like that would ever happen.) Suffice it to say, Pixar have once again delivered a highly entertaining, visually stunning and genuinely touching film that is up their with the best films I've seen this year, even if it's not in the upper echelons of the studio's dizzyingly impressive output. Last night, ITV broadcast an episode of The South Bank Show focusing on Disney and Pixar, in which the creative chief of both studios, John Lasseter, described Up as Pixar's most cartoony movie to date. Watching it today, it was clear what he meant. The contrast with the studio's previous movie, Wall-E is huge: while that film took on an almost photorealistic appearance at times and was specifically designed to evoke live action cinematography with its lens flares, depth of field and other deliberate imperfections, Up seems far less concerned about appearing "real". On the one hand, it looks a good deal more precise and "perfect" than Wall-E; on the other, it's almost tempting to see it as a step back technologically-speaking. From a conventional (live action) perspective, Wall-E was by far the studio's most technically impressive output to date, with all the supposed flaws very deliberately created. In contrast, Up's visuals have more in common with those of the likes of Cars and Monsters, Inc.

The latter should come as no surprise, as they share a director, Pete Docter, whose sensibility has always leant more towards bright colours, broad physical humour and conventional cartoony cuteness than his more serious-minded, brooding counterpart, Andrew Stanton (Wall-E and Finding Nemo), or indeed Brad Bird, whose The Incredibles remains Pixar's more adult-oriented venture to date. I haven't done any serious research into the differing reactions to their output, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Bird and Stanton's films do better with the critics while Doctor's are a bigger hit with the audiences. Monsters, Inc. and Up are more conventional crowd-pleasers, and I suspect it's no accident that Pixar followed Wall-E (which is actually a rather depressing film if you take the time to think about it) with something more light-hearted and fanciful.

That's not to say that Up is nothing but a cavalcade of pratfalls and other assorted sight gags. Indeed, the opening scenes, in which we see the film's protagonist, Carl Fredericksen, meet the love of his life, Ellie, and then lose her to a long and debilitating illness, are tragically heartbreaking. This sequence, which recounts everything from their marriage to her death entirely through visuals, is masterfully achieved and the sort of thing that Pixar's more obvious competitors at DreamWorks could do with learning a thing or two from. Despite snuffing it in the opening minutes, Ellie is a constant presence throughout the film, and prevents the curmudgeonly Mr. Fredericksen from coming across as merely a nasty old man.

First and foremost, though, Up is feel-good escapism - the sort of movie in which dogs are fitted with collars which vocalise their inner thoughts (to hilarious effect) and a house can float thanks to a thousand brightly coloured helium balloons. In every respect - from character design to basic concept - this is not a film that pretends to exist in the real world, and yet the realness of the human emotions are what make it resonate so successfully with the viewer. In terms of Pixar's filmography, I'd put it behind Wall-E, The Incredibles and original Toy Story, but its a marvellous cinematic achievement nonetheless, and as myself and others never tire of repeating, most other studios can't hope to match even Pixar's worst, let alone their best.

IMDB reference

USA: John Lasseter, 1995

IMDB reference

USA/Germany: Brett Ratner, 2002

IMDB reference

More posts