June 05, 2009
The Contrarian View: Not so high on Up
The reviews of Pixar's latest film, Up, have been uniformly top-notch, which reveals more about the critics than it does the movie, according to the Weekly Standard's John Podhoretz.
Here's what you won't hear about Up: It is, for long stretches, very boring.
[...]
The fact is that you won't hear anyone say Up is boring because it would be, well, improper to say it-just as you never heard anybody say its Pixar predecessor, Wall-E, completely ran out of steam in its disastrous second half, even though everybody knew it did. A cultural orthodoxy has been imposed on us, according to which it is impermissible to criticize a Pixar film.
Pixar, the cartoon maker whose 10 feature films since 1995 have set a new standard for the animated film, has now become an Object of Cultural Piety (OCP), which is simultaneously one of the deadliest and most potent forces known to man. Once someone or something becomes an OCP, it must be the subject of veneration.
Podhoretz goes on to tell the sad tale of the most prominent example of OCP, a man who scaled the heights of cinematic acclaim, only to hit such a low that his last film Nuked the Fridge -- which is like jumping the shark, only with a cultural icon much more beloved than the Fonz.
Posted by Mike Lief at June 5, 2009 09:45 AM
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Comments
Nonsense. I though Ratatouille was pointless, and Wall-E was fairly weak. Cars was, if anything, underrated. Opinions may vary, even on Pixar films.
Posted by: Dan at June 5, 2009 10:52 AM
FInally!! after seeing the 2nd half of wall-e, and comparing it to the glowing nay *rapturous* reviews it got, i felt like the bad guy in zoolander: "can't anyone else see that all the parts with the tubby humans in it are boring, verging on downright sucky?!? i feel like i'm taking CRAZY PILLS here!!"
still, as a major contributor to the dear leader's campaign, pixar has had passed a pixar fairness doctrine, in which even subtle, muted criticism constitutes hate speech. expect a swat team soon.
Posted by: nom de guerre at June 5, 2009 02:36 PM
"The fact is that you won't hear anyone say Up is boring because it would be, well, improper to say it-just as you never heard anybody say its Pixar predecessor, Wall-E, completely ran out of steam in its disastrous second half"
You don't hear people say those things (except for the people who whine just to be different, congrats to the two tools above) because they simply aren't true.
Posted by: Matt at June 5, 2009 03:36 PM