Up! A Review

Before, I launch into my review of Pixar's latest blockbuster release, Up!, I have to admit, I haven't actually seen the movie. But I have read the colouring book. So my comments are based entirely upon that.

Truth be told, going into this colouring book, my hopes were pretty high. While I've never read any of the colouring book adaptations of their films in the past, I have enjoyed every single Pixar release I've seen. From Toy Story to the Incredibles to Wall-E, their work is witty, rich, complex and visually stunning. I'm not generally a fan of computer animation, but in the hands of Pixar, the cold precision of pixel art becomes warm and endearing. I'd pretty much decided I'd follow Pixar wherever they decided to go.

And yet, back before it was released, upon hearing what the hook for Up! was -- grumpy old man ties baloons to his house so he can escape his neighbourhood -- my immediate thought was, "Wow, this doesn't sound like my kind of movie at all." But, seeing as it was Pixar, I trusted they'd be able to win me over.

Well, after reading the colouring book, I think I should've trusted my initial reaction. If the plot of the movie bears any relation to what I've read, frankly, this film is a disaster.

(Warning: numerous spoilers ahead... of the colouring book... and maybe the movie, I'm not sure.)

The story opens with grumpy old man, Carl, floating away in his balloon-carried home. Sadly, the colouring book never really makes his motivation for tying balloons to his house clear, and I have to admit I found this jarring. But the idea was sufficiently amusing that I was willing to follow along and see where this floating two storey took me.

But before getting anywhere, I had to endure a couple of those obligatory "puzzle pages" that still plague the colouring book genre.

First up, there's a tedious "circle the two Russells that look exactly alike" puzzle. After that there's a truly baffling one where you're supposed to circle plates to keep them from cracking. The scene depicts the house shaking about in a storm so, presumably, your waxy circles of crayon are somehow supposed to save the china from crashing on the floor -- unnecessary busy work, if you ask me, as the plates are going to hover in the air forever because this is after all a picture in a colouring book and not a scene in a motion picture.

What turns this "puzzle" into a real annoyance, though, is that after all this circling you're supposed to identify how many unbroken plates there are. Do they mean how many in the picture are drawn unbroken? Or how many will remain unbroken if my crayon circles are drawn with precision about them? What if one of my circles isn't completely closed or if what passes for a "circle" from my three year old is really more of a scribble in the vicinity of a plate? Do we count those plates as broken? You see my confusion?

The colouring book never clarifies any of this but fortunately it provides a solution if you turn the page upside down. Phew! (Spoiler: the answer's four.)

Finally, Carl and his house wind up somewhere called "Paradise Falls" and it's here that things really go off the rails.

I won't blow the rest of the story -- such as it is -- for you. Suffice it to say it involves an exotic species of bird, mastiffs with talking dog collars and a mad scientist.

Up until this point I've been willing to happily suspend my disbelief. Floating house? No problem, I can accept that. But talking dogs and mad scientists? Come on.

No, seriously. A floating house with balloons coming out its chimney is a great idea. But a huge part of the magic of it derives from the fact that this house is special. Unique. If it exists alongside a completely unrelated island inhabited by talking dogs and mad scientists, the magic gets diluted. It's just one more crazy thing in a world where all sorts of crazy business goes on. Ho hum.

From then on out, the colouring book plot unravels pretty much as you'd expect, peppered along the way with a few too-easily-solved mazes and more of those "circle the two things that are the same" puzzles. (Nobody likes those puzzles. Why do colouring book writers continue to rely upon them? Is it laziness or malice?)

So far, Up! is coming up lacking, but at least with Pixar you can pretty much be guaranteed a colourful, visually-impressive spectacle if nothing else.

Not so with the colouring book, I'm afraid.

The art is standard black-outline fare, nothing innovative going on here. And as for the colours.... Well, the colouring book I picked up actually came with four crayons -- a nice touch, I have to admit. But the colours they chose were a pale lime green, pink, yellow and an innocuous purply-blue. Hardly inspired choices, and I have to wonder at what the editors were thinking. The lack of a fleshtone makes colouring the human characters difficult. And as anyone who's done any serious colouring knows, yellow crayons are almost always invisible on paper. Frustrating!

At least my daughter was happy to have a pink.

Ultimately, I can't say I came away with particularly fond feelings for Up! and I'm not inclined to see the movie at this point.

In short, I'll have to give Up! The Colouring Book a big thumbs down.